Board of Commissioners - Regular Meeting

department. What we're going to be talking about is in the context of our accreditation program, which most of you are aware of. We've been uh in this process for roughly five years uh seeking accreditation to really up our game and move our department forward. I'd like to welcome a special guest who's here with us tonight, Chief William Hunt of the City of Shelby Fire Department. Uh Chief Hunt's been the chief down there for several years. He's deeply involved in accreditation, not for only for his own department, but as a peer assessor who travels the country, going to other departments uh to be able to evaluate their documents and be able to uh work through helping to uh get to the point where they can recommend departments to be able to move to a hearing to get accredited uh through CPSC, Center for Public Safety Excellence. So, we really appreciate him being here tonight. He's leading a peer team. Once again, he's from North Carolina, but he's leading a team of folks who gathered here earlier this week. Uh he has a group of four and the others are from uh other states around the country, also fire service professionals in departments that have either achieved accreditation or working to do so presently. So, once again, really appreciate them being here today. Uh so we have a series of meetings that it's been a really busy week and I really appreciate Chief Hunt taking the time to come here and uh spend some time with us with uh while we do this presentation this evening. So we're going to be talking once again about the community risk assessment and standards of cover. Like I said to say that it is a real mouthful. It makes a lot more sense if you break it down. Uh the community risk assessment is one thing, standards of cover is another thing. They mirror each other, but they come together to help us build an understanding of our community in a way that is extremely valuable from a public safety standpoint. So, what we're going to talk about tonight, a real brief overview of our accreditation process. Some of you have heard about it before and some of you are maybe a little bit in the dark on it. When we walk out here tonight, I want to make sure that's not the case. We're going to talk about our community risk assessment and then we're going to talk about our standard standards of cover separately so you can

understand the relationship between those two things. And then of most value to us and the reason that we're participating in the accreditation process to begin with is to develop an improvement plan so that our department can recognize uh the the places where we have room for improvement and make sure we're moving towards that improvement in the future because we happen to believe that our community uh always deserves better public safety than what it has and we want to strive to to reach there knowing that we're always going to be reaching and leaning forward to do that. So, first of all, a real quick overview of our accreditation. The accreditation model of CPSCE actually uh was developed uh as far back as the 80s in a concert between the international association of fire chiefs and the international uh city and county manager association which uh our city manager is a member of and and has proud affiliation with and has shown leadership in that uh in that group as well. So the accreditation uh involves multiple things that you that you see on the screen, but there's so much more work that goes into it than what you see on this slide. Back in 2022, some of you who were in office at that time may remember that I came here and presented to you the strategic plan for the agency, which was to follow the years from 2022 to 2027. That was a comprehensive process internally and externally to gather data to be able to develop strategic goals for our organization that we could then carry out and it could shape uh whether it's budget proposals uh policy within the department initiatives and goals that we could strive for over the course of that period. Clearly, we're on the back half of that now and by this time next year we'll be deep into or will have developed the next fiveyear strategic plan for the agency. that document is critical in the process for accreditation. Another really big piece of it uh big topic of conversation this week is our self- assessment. So this is a collection of roughly 250 performance

indicators that covers all aspects of our service. Uh it uh it covers human resources, our fleet management, dispatch, the number of units that we put on a fire scene, uh h how we do how we do things, our processes, our staffing. Uh it's very comprehensive and like I said there are 250 performance indicators and they all have to be written to and they have to be written to professionally and in a format that aderes to the accreditation model. Next is the community risk. It says risk analysis. uh actually should say community risk assessment uh a community risk assessment uh which is essentially applying a methodology to better understand the risks uh that can occur within our community. And then the standards of cover is taking our deployment and what we actually put out on the street and matching that to that risk to kind of measure our performance to see how we're doing because we're not going to know how we're going to move forward until we've looked at the risk. We've looked at what we're leveraging against that risk to see where we have some room for improvement uh to be able to do better in the future whether that's through uh human resources uh material resources changing our processes and etc. So, uh, we'll start with the, uh, community risk assessment because once again, you've already been introduced to the strategic plan and, uh, and the, uh, performance indicators cut across a swath of aspects of the department that we're not going to drill down on too deeply tonight in this presentation. But the community risk assessment, if you look at it, it's essentially painting a picture of our jurisdiction and the vulnerabilities uh to our citizens, our buildings, our environment, and even our economic vitality as a community and being able to understand that and what you do need to leverage against that to be able to solve problems uh for our public. So the community risk assessment

involves looking at our at our geography and under uh taking our whole jurisdiction to be able to carve it up into areas to be able to understand characteristics to be able to plan effectively for the resources that we're going to send out to solve problems in those areas. It involves a risk classification. So taking what we know can happen out there and breaking it down into smaller understandable pieces to be able to understand the risk itself. this the different levels of severity of a risk and uh and to be able to define that so it's clearly communicated to you as elected officials to the public that could be out there being harmed by those risks and our own firefighters so we can understand the game that we're playing. The critical task analysis is another really important aspect of the community risk assessment. That's where you take those risks and you break them down into their components and uh look at them to kind of see like really the nuts and bolts of it. this is the problem. What do you need to put hands on and how many hands do you need to go out there and solve that problem? And we'll speak a little bit more on that here in just a moment. Uh risk scoring. So taking those risks and applying a methodology that we can use across very different types of risk to be able to provide a consistent methodology be able to score that risk to be able to understand it and once again to be able to communicate that to you and to be able to confront it. And lastly here is the disaster potential. those things that don't happen that often, but when they do, they cut across many of the different types of risks that they face. All of you on the day lived through the the ice storm. Many of you obviously have memories of the the 2000 tornado. These type of things uh what comes out of those when it comes down, they impact utilities and structural components and fires may start in some of those cases. People are using electricity different those things cut across very differently. But we we recognize those disaster potentials and we understand that some of that has to do with geography. Some of it has to do

with weather uh topography and uh and circumstances and historical trends. So, we're going to be uh looking at that with our community risk assessment as well. And don't be scared that I'm going to be here all night because I'm not going super in-depth on on all of these things, but but you will have a chance to to get a closer look at that after this. Okay. Okay. So, our geographic planning zones, if you look up here uh at this map, everybody should recognize this. This is the community that we live in that you're serving, right? So, you should all remember from the times that we've talked before that we have five stations, and we have five general run areas. Station one is uh is there on 9inth Street, right in the middle of town. Uh station two is out to the east, station three is out to the west, four is in the southeast, and five is in the southwest. So we took each one of our station run areas and we subdivided those to compartmentalize them for the sake of gathering data and being able to understand the characteristics of these zones. So whenever you see 1.2 and 1.2 in the center of the map that's station one's run area and it's divided by all of these are divided by uh thoroughares that you're all very familiar with. So station one for instance you just cut it in half by Frederick Street the main street that runs through it. some of the outer perimeter ones. It's the bypass. You have the outside of the bypass, you have the inside. And you all know that the difference in a lot of areas is that you might have more commercial on the outside of the bypass. So, that's a very different planning zone than what you're going to deal with with primarily residential on the inside of the bypass in some of these planning zones. Uh so, so that's how we divided up the planning zones. And there's there's we have a profile for each one of these zones. What happens there, what the demographics are, how many building permits are coming in there, what those building permits are for, what happens, whether people are doing business, living there, if it's mostly apartments versus single family, and those other characteristics that we need to know to be able to plan to do our jobs

effectively in fire service. So the risk classification this it should be it's more intuitive for us maybe than it is for someone from the outside but whenever you look at what the fire department does as an allhazards agency we are a fire department that's our brand that uh I'm sure as you've paid attention whenever I do the annual reports and and you look at some of the stats that I'm sure have been shared with you over time by the city manager and by myself then you've seen that fire runs are actually a low percentage overall of the runs that we go on a much higher percentage age would be in the realm of EMS, emergency medical services and then technical rescue hazardous materials and then for the sake of the of the community risk assessment we have we've uh cataloged river emergencies separately because of the difference in what it takes for the deployment to be able to access emergencies that take place on the river and adjacent to the river uh to be able to reach those things by watercraft. So those are essentially the buckets that we dropped our our call types into to be able to classify our risks for the community. Next, the critical task analysis. As you see on the slide, you're it's a process of breaking down our incident types into task level components. And we do that to kind of take a look at our own agency to say, okay, with our resources, what do we need to leverage against this problem? Whether it's the people, uh the number of trucks, a specific type of equipment, and then to make deployment determinations based on that. going through a process like this, which we used a team-based approach to do it, uh, cutting across all ranks from firefighters on up to myself as the facilitator of the process. We got down to the nitty-gritty. We got in a room. We looked at it from the simplest call in each one of those areas we discussed before, fire, EMS, and on to the other ones. We just looked at them like what uh how many people do we need to solve this problem if it's a simple problem.

And then we worked our way through to the the more complex problems. Whenever you get to a point where you say okay if we're being honest with ourselves this is what it takes to solve that problem and if we look back say historically that is not what we've done then that's something that we understand that we need to address and that's the kind of thing that we want to derive from this process to move forward. Okay. So an example of the critical tasking and once again not to go in depth about it but whenever you see a chart like this this was developed out of those meetings with our staff where we just broke it down. uh you have the classification of fire and you're looking at a low risk. If you look at that the column uh the the lowrisisk column there in the middle of the page, it's essentially saying that that's the number of people you need to perform each one of these functions to effectively mitigate that incident. So a low-risk fire, for instance, may be a car fire. If you look at those tasks, you need someone to be in charge. That person is going to be looking out for the other folks on scene. They're going to be handling radio communications and directing resources toward the problem and asking for other resources if the scope of the problem increases. Pump operations, if we're going to be throwing water off the truck, someone actually has to be at the truck to be able to uh control the pressures and be able to affect that. So, we're getting the water and if you have a draw down of water to be able to uh move forward to access another water source such as a hydrant. And then the attack line, you want someone moving the hose towards the problem. you want someone on the nozzle to be able to control that. So, this does it really does get down into detail for us. And each one of these tasks within the risk assessment and standards of cover document are defined so that you could pretty much build your fire department from scratch and and give them the uh give them a description of what they need to to do to be able to mitigate these problems. So, uh so once again, not super detailed, but just kind of give you a glance at what we're looking at on the low risk. You see that uh onto that four on the bottom, you see

it takes four people to solve the problem on that level. It goes up and up and up. If you look at the far right on the bottom or I'm sorry, on the yes, on the bottom, you see 31 people. If you know that our minimum staffing is 27, then you know that if you get to the maximum risk, which for us would be a high-rise or a commercial structure over 13,000 square foot, then you understand that what we have on duty may not be enough. And that's where we draw on mutual aid agreements and resources that we have. Maybe we don't have 31 people on duty at that time, but that's why we have agreements with partners for them to be able to augment our resources to be able to affect a response to that problem. I want to contrast this with the next slide. So you can see how fire ramps up pretty quickly from four up to 31 people in what we refer to as an effective response force which is by definition the complement of personnel that is necessary to mitigate the incident that we're discussing. Contrast that with this slide here on EMS. Most EMS calls fall into that first uh that lowrisk uh column there. So you can see you need somebody who's going to be right there doing the primary care for that patient. Usually they need one or two people to help grab things out of the bag and help them get vitals and those things. And you need someone else once again to be able to control that scene, randle handle radio communications and be able to ask for the resources if you need them and to handle documentation. So the reason that this ramps up and you might need more people is because there are other types of calls that involve more patients or have other aspects to them uh maybe even technical aspects. There was a call today uh involving a a semi against a vehicle. Well, that's not a simple uh that's not a lowrisk incident. Motor vehicle accidents that moves up in severity. It's more risk. You need more people to be able to mitigate that incident properly. And then the high-risisk, we send even more people on that. That could be your where

you're gearing more towards a mass casualty incident. And if we're sending 11 people to that, then the ambulance service had better be sending a lot more than that because that means you're turning those ambulance around and transporting uh a lot of patients. Okay, so that's our critical tasking at a glance. So our risk scoring, you use the risk scores, it's u once again I have a mistake on this risk scores to determine, you've already determined the classifications by saying we go to fires, we go to EMS, we go to hazmat. Now, the risk scores within each one of those help you determine what your categories are within those on your severity. So, the incidents with the least are always going to be considered your low risk. And that's why in the slides that you saw previous to this, it showed that you have four people on those runs. We send four on an engine. So, if we send an engine, you're getting four people. That's the generally the least that you're going to get to come solve the problem. So it's from that to adding other units onto it to scale up and go well beyond those first four people that show up as a compliment. So you're categorizing each one of these risks from low to moderate to high and in some cases even maximum whenever uh certain certain types of uh certain classifications uh actually go well beyond that. Okay. So to be able to do that, you have to apply the same scoring methodology across each one of those classifications. And the the slide that's in front of you pretty much lays out how we're doing that. Whether it is an EMS or a technical rescue or a run on the on the river, we're looking at those each one of those call types to say how often does this happen here? And we use our data to determine that. We're looking at the consequence of it. How many people are affected by this or what is the economic or environmental impact of it? And on the impact, how many people are we sending out there? Because if you think about it, if we send folks from two station houses and they're tied up

for a while in a community where we have five fire stations, you effectively only have three operating stations available for the next emergency that comes in that case. Uh if you understand that. So, so anyway, this is the scale that we applied and we apply this scale to every call type, every emergency call type that we have within our agency that we run on. And this is just an example of how we do this. So, low-risk fire, I mentioned the vehicle fires, it could be a trash fire, dumpster, it's the one that's going to take the least number of personnel. Whether it's low risk fire, moderate risk, or it's low-risk hazmat, high-risisk hazmat, across all of these categories in the risk assessment, whenever you uh whenever you take the time to look at this once it's provided to you, you will be able to look at this simple graphic and see how we have formulated the these risk scores and applied them to this model. So that at a glance you can look at the shaded area in that triangle and you can tell by the size of that triangle how much of a risk that is in our community and when it is a risk what is the nature of that risk. For example low-risk fires it doesn't angle towards impact that much because we don't send that many units on it. It doesn't go out to con consequence that far because the lowrisk fires they are low risk. They don't usually cause a lot of damage. We're usually able to to stop those. they don't involve structures, but if you look at the probability, they actually happen more often than some of the fires that uh that whenever you scale up in uh severity, you're actually going to see. So, let's contrast uh the lowrisk fires with the moderate risk fire incidents. If I flip back and then flip forward, you see a big difference. The impact, that triangle is skewed down towards impact. It's because we're sending so many more of our units on that run. uh and the moderate risk fires, those are your single family dwellings, your breadandbut uh house

fires that you typically go on residential. Uh so going through these once again, I have these in in the risk assessment for all of these different uh categories of calls that you're going to be able to take time to look at yourself. So going through high high fire incidents, even more impact is getting down into more consequence because some people are put out of their jobs. Something bigger is going to have to be rebuilt. you're down to maximum risk, maximum impact, maximum consequence, but very low probability. If these happened a lot, then we would have to rethink our uh how we staff our fire department and what kind of resources we're deploying for emergency services here in Onsboro. Okay. So, to move on from that, I mentioned the disaster potential here, the uh natural and intentional disasters. Once again, we have experiences with these things. I'm not going to uh like do this to death, but you can look at it and see we're talking about uh floods, which most of the city is not in the flood plane that we have to be so concerned about. Tornadoes can go anywhere. We've gone other places to help other people since we've had tornadoes here that we had to worry about, but we understand that that's a risk that can happen here because it has before and it will again. Uh hopefully not in the heavily populated parts of town. Severe winter weather. Uh some of you uh probably remember some of the circumstances that you're seeing on the screen there because those were taken locally. Um earthquakes, we all grew up understanding that someday it was going to come. Uh terrorism uh is just a reality uh in the world today unfortunately and then mass casualty events. We are worried about the things that bad actors can do uh or even whenever you think about some of the high-profile public events that we do and some of the risks. The reason we do so much safety planning and involve so many partners in that planning is because there are so many things that can happen and the potential risk is there and it's up to us to counter some of that risk. Okay, so that's the risk assessment side. Once again, we mirror

that with the standards of cover. So we've described our methodology for looking at the risks that are in the community which we derive a lot from our historical data that we have from our own records. And now we'll take the standards of cover to be able to look at how are we leveraging resources against that determining what what are the standards that we need to be applying to our responses and how are we doing on meeting those metrics. So the standards of cover development involves benchmarking uh finding your baselines and then performing a gap analysis between those things to to have really strong performance analytics to be able to understand where you are by measuring yourself against uh against standards that you can derive from sources such as the NFPA and even looking at uh other like-sized departments and how they deploy but but uh and then le looking at that against the context of the resources that you have in your own department of what you can do and what you're up against and what your trends are. So benchmarking, we go right to NFPA 1710. It's very common. I'm sure Chief Hunt recognizes that. So 1710 lays out a response time continuum, which we don't have to adhere too strictly, but it's a really great guide to be able to understand uh the standards for what should be expected for a response, an adequate response in the areas that you see on the screen there. And there's a graphic here that comes right out of 1710 that you can see to understand this. So you're always starting from a state of normaly before the emergency has happened. If you follow along from top to bottom, someone has to find that the event has occurred and then they're going to contact our public safety answering point by calling 911. There's the amount of time that it takes the 911 center to send that call over to us. So you have your alarm processing time. You get into the middle of that, the turnout time is our behavioral side where we have to actually get geared up after we learn about the call and leave the

station to get to the problem. And then the amount of time it takes to get from where we are to where we need to be is our travel time. Uh and then all of these the times for all of these things are being kept in the CAD system and all of this data is being transferred over to our records management system for us to be able to do our data analysis. So that's the response time continuum that performs the basis for our benchmarking. So take all that and take our data and then apply the methodology that we've learned from the accreditation process and we are working off of 90th percentile times to try to learn where we are against our benchmarks and you get something that looks like this. And we're not going through all of these that are in the uh risk assessment standards of cover. But if you look at this, this is the moderate risk fire, which once again, most people's context for what the fire department does is to go out and fight fires in residential buildings, single family residences. So, this gives you kind of a taste of what that data looks like. And I base the data on fiscal years. If you look in the column that is headed by 2022 to 2025, those are those fiscal years. the uh I believe the benchmark for uh call processing time is 64 seconds 90% of the time and over that three-year experience uh Paul Nave and his dispatchers were able to achieve a 59 second uh baseline for that. So that's great. So then what do you do with that? And we're going to look at the benchmarks here on the ne or the our uh our gap analysis I think on the next slide. But if if your uh if your benchmark is 64 seconds and you're doing it 59 seconds, well, guess what? Next time we do it, our benchmark is actually going to be less than 59 seconds because we always want to be leaning forward and doing better. So, taking that, this is a graphic that shows how our uh gap analysis came out for our department. And this is kind of

busy if you don't have a lot of context for looking at it, but uh let me just say this presents the benchmarks that we have. And once again for for this one, they primarily came out of NFPA 1710. So 64 seconds 90% of the time for our call handling. A minute and 20 seconds 90% of the time for our folks after they get the alarm to be on the truck and the wheels start to roll. Four minutes to be able to get from where they are to where they need to be. Travel time. And then the ERF travel, that's going to be the amount of time that it takes to constitute the whole complement that is necessary to mitigate that incident. You have your first unit total response, which goes from the time that we're notified until arrival on scene. And then the effective response force total response may not be that's not the first unit that gets there. That's when the whole complement that is necessary gets there. These are all extremely important for us to measure because we're not able to perform our service until we have the assets. available where the problem is actually occurring. And I'm contrasting that with EMS. So you see the fire one and then you see EMS. Basically the ones where you see the greens, that's where we're surpassing the our baselines are better than our benchmark. The yellows were within a minute of the benchmark that we're trying to achieve and the reds are over a minute. So those are our those red mark those are our red flags. That's what we need to work on the most. So I'm almost done. the improvement plan. Like what do we learn from this whole process? Well, the main thing we want to learn is what can we do better? Because we want to be better. We talk about going from good to great. We do have a good uh a good fire department. We want people to understand that whether whether we're great today or not is not of as much consequence as far as we're striving to be there. And this is how we do that. So, we identify things that we can actually do to get to that point. One of those is working towards achieving the adop the adopted performance benchmarks that are outlined

in the in the risk assessment standards of cover document. One is already uh in the early stages of being implemented the automated vehicle location where dispatch goes from having a map where they have ESN's and they determine where which unit goes based on where it is geographically. The difference with automated vehicle location is you send the closest unit. So, that's going to help those those travel times and those response times. Keeping units in their assigned run areas during peak call times. We know the afternoon's busiest. I have the data that shows which hours are busiest and on which days. Maybe those aren't the best times for units to be out of station going to the training center or doing other things. evaluating our watercraft deployment because news flash, it takes a while to hook up a boat at station one and get it down in the river to be able to be ready to do the things it needs to do if we don't know about an emergency uh beforehand, which we usually don't. Uh determining the best location to rebuild station 4, operation firehouse, we're all proud of that. It's we're deep into that. It's going great. We haven't uh made a final determination on the location of station 4, whether it'll be in the same location as now or if a property acquisition or repurposing of another property may be necessary. This is a chance to look at that to see if it can help improve some of our metrics for the southeast corridor in town out 231 in the developing area out old Harford that's been annexed. Aligning our training plan with our critical task analysis. So when our teams got together and we did this critical task analysis, we found that there were places where when we talked about what we need to be doing was slightly different than what has always been done. And that's of high value to us because we need to be willing to change. So whenever you're going to make those changes, it's critical that you seed that in your training plan. the uh and lastly on this slide is revising our community risk reduction plan to focus on measurable outcomes because that can be really powerful

because you know that uh in my heart I'm more of a prevention guy than a response guy because what you prevent you don't have to respond to. So uh so that's a very critical piece of this is not just trying to get to these things fast but trying to make sure they don't happen in the first place. I want to thank you for your time. I'll take any questions that you have and for anyone watching at home or in the audience, this is how you can get a hold of me or you can find me at 512 West 9th Street. Thanks, Chief. Uh, tremendous amount of information try to absorb. There's a lot more than that. Uh, any questions from the DAS,

in each of the stations, what's the worst? What do you consider to be the most challenging scenario? And I'll throw one out so you have a context. So for station uh the station that handles Roosevelt House, I imagine that's one you're very conscious of because I see multiple units. Anytime we get a call at Roosevelt House, you'll see multiple units go there because it's a high-rise. So would uh what would be the the most difficult fire to fight in the other the other four areas? Uh ST like station uh two out on 54 as an example.

Yeah. Well, uh, first of all, when you're talking about the Roosevelt House or you're talking about some of these bigger structures, that's not a problem just for that station. They're just the first guys that get there.

The Roosevelt House, they're going up those 18 flights of stairs and it's not like you run up 18 flights of stairs. They have a lot on their back and on their body that they're taking up there. They're just the tip of the spear. Uh, we're looking at the draw down of the whole whole agency and what that's doing to us whenever we have to do that and whether we have to pull in help to finish that. But if you go to be specific about station two and you have that east corridor with the rapid development uh that's occurred out there, the the risk with fire uh still predominant in that area is single family homes that are aging. If you think about Glendale, Wing Avenue, that area, you're more likely to have a fire there. We don't do uh we don't do inspections in in homes like we don't have we can't just walk in people's home and do inspections, right? But if we go out to uh out to Ragu or out to Gateway Commons, we walk through there, we have codes that they're adearing to the Gateway Commons and a lot of that area that's out east of the bypass. We really don't have a lot of call volume there and there and it's a lot of new construction. We have some uh alarms that come in. You have alarms at the hospital. You don't have a lot of real uh real structure fires that happen. But I'll say the thing that we would worry about the most is something critical such as the hospital having a significant incident that would overwhelm our resources and we would absolutely require the county's assistance in the near term while we were pulling off duty units. And that's part of the reason that the county actually is automatic aid to the hospital. When we go to an alarm in the hospital, the county's already sending a truck with us so that we have a head start on the problem uh if it turns out to be an actual confirmed fire. Uh that run area is very interesting because you have a an industrial corridor over there with the Ragu Mishan.

Uh you have RWari out there. Uh a burgeoning uh issue that we're that we confront is the advent of the assisted living and uh nursing homes whether you're talking about Cedarhurst or out on Calat. Those are realities and that's why we're dividing into those geographic planning zones so that the officers and the even the firefighters under them in those areas can know their areas better and understand what those risks are and understand what they're confronting. Because if you ask the guys at station five, uh, the ones who run to the Roosevelt House, they're much more likely to have to go down Sherm Road and go to a part of the town where the community is aging to be able to go to a medical call out there to try to help someone who needs their help. uh whether that's applying oxygen, taking vitals or helping to load them to go uh to the hospital for a stroke or one of those things, they're much more likely to do that and that dictates the rise in their call volume much more than what's happening in terms of fire. But there is no doubt a tremendous amount of resources that would be necessary in either one of the Roosevelt houses.

Thank you, Chief. Appreciate it. Thank you, ma'am.

So, all this medical stuff, do they have to have EMT certification before they get hired? with the Owensboro Fire Department. No, no, we uh you're not required to have uh EMT. You are if you come in as a lateral transfer. So, if you come in as a from another department to come on our department and uh kind of circumvent the entry level hiring process that we usually do, build a list and hire off of every year, then you then you have to have EMT and some other things. uh our entry level uh process such as the five recruits that that we were really honored to have you come out and swear in on Saturday uh Saturday morning when they came in I think one is an EMT but they were not required to have EMT at that point they are required to achieve that certification by the time they complete their 18month uh probational period

just some are just not all of them right none of the entry level are required to have it they when they come in, they are they are all required to have it to to leave probation to be able to get a regular appointment that you guys will vote on. Okay. Just trying to get that straight in my head. Somebody knocked the power off these computers up here. Okay. Any other questions?

Okay. Uh I want to close by saying uh saying thank you. This is a robust document. The current form of it's about 180 pages. I've learned some things from the uh peer group that is in town doing our assessment this week that uh that gives me reason to think that there are some other parts that we can build in. If you're lucky, it'll get up to 200 pages. We will be making this available soon uh to you. It'll be available to the public, a searchable PDF that is very userfriendly that I hope that you do take the time to look at because this is your community and you will recognize a lot in this. uh but I think it it'll be good for you in your role as elected officials making decisions that impact our department and this community. Lastly, I mentioned those 250 performance indicators. One of the things that is important for uh jurisdictions to do is to adopt the risk assessment and cover standards of cover uh for you guys to adopt that as the AHJ. So I'm presenting this here today to familiarize you with that and I just want you to know that we will be back with the finalized document and asking you to adopt the uh to adopt the data and the recommendations and the improvement plan in that document. So thank you.

Thank you. There you go.

We have a monitor issue that u So long I knocked my monitor off. Okay, we'll skip back up to 4A. We would like to unveil the Orangeboro 2025 Christmas card. We have the master of design Aaron Kaiser here today. And uh I don't know. We don't

we're going to put it up on the screen because I approved it way too late for you to get a nice photo here for it. Huh?

I want to pass my phone around. You can see it. That's my favorite one ever. Should I get up here? Yeah, come on up here. The best place to go right here. That's good. Okay. Yeah. I don't want to get in front of everybody. You have to state your name and address for the record.

Oh, Aaron Kaiser, 215 East 9th Street. Um, so this year's what I was trying to do was create a holiday version of the illuminate mural that was done on the side of the building. Uh, I don't know what that building is called, but um, the Riverwalk side of it. So, actually, when I was down there painting the mural for the illuminate, I was trying to consider how I would do it if it was for a seasonal thing. The Johnny Depp mural, every year I keep telling myself, I'm going to go down there for Christmas and paint a Santa hat on it and um never get around to it. So, that was the whole concept for this year was to create the holiday version of that. Well, we're in the process of

Yeah, it could be horrible. We could It could be horrible. Nobody's seen it. I don't think it's horrible. I really like it. I tell you. Oh, is that awesome or what? So, unfortunately, this one doesn't work under the UV lights like the mural downtown does. I think it's fantastic. My That's my favorite one. Oh, well, thank you. Thank you. And I appreciate you allowing me to do this. Uh, I had a lot of fun with this one.

I aggravated the snot out of you, didn't I, trying to get you to do this and do that, and I try to leave him alone because his creativity is beyond my comprehension. So, but I really am pleased with that. Thank you very much. No, no. Well, thank you. Y'all have a great night. Okay. I'm afraid to touch anything almost. I just sat there and leave that on my monitor there. Okay. Got the Christmas card done. 4C city project list. City manager Nate Pagan.

Yes, sir. Mayor, thank you. I know you've had the uh project list update. I emailed out yesterday. It's in your packet for your review. you I think you have hard copies with you as well. So I'll just say that I think that actually this week the framing started going up on the senior center so it's good to see that progressing well. Um pickle ball is moving pretty quickly as well. Happy to answer any questions if you have any. Uh the indoor sports facility

y this continues to go well. I think the framing is largely done structural work and so they're working on some of the what? Oh, it's starting interior walls and still on schedule for a late June, early July of 26 opening. And back to the Christmas card. Uh, I forgot to say that there can be purchased at city hall 101 East 4th Street for $2 each starting next week. So, watch the Facebook page from the city of Orangeboro and there's just a limited number of cards available. Thanks for letting me I know the city card don't like me doing that, but All right. Items 5A, consider approval of minutes from dated November the 4th, 2025. I'll make a motion to approve these minutes. Could I have a second, please? Second.

Second. Any discussion, additions, or deletions? Hearing none. All in favor indicate by saying I. All oppose. Motion carries. Thank you. Um, consider these board appointments, please. Uh, Orange Parks and Recreation Advisory Board reappoint Paula Hayden to a two-year term effective November 23rd, 2025, and Human Relations Commission reappoint Dava Kelly to a three-year term effective no December the 4th, 2025. I'll make a motion to approve these boardments. Can I have a second, please? Second. Any discussion, additions, or deletions? Hearing none. All in favor indicate by saying I.

I. All oppose. Motion carries. Thank you. Item six. This will be second reading of an ordinance and it will be a roll call vote. Miss David, Ordinance 19-2025, an ordinance establishing procedures governing suspensions or revocations of the privilege to ride Owensboro Transit System buses read for approval on second reading this 18th day of November 2025. I'll make a motion to approve. Can I second, please? Second. City manager, please inform us about this, please.

Uh yeah, mayor, just in summary, we did discuss this last week. this seging of an ordinance creating a process for suspending unruly riders from the transit system. While it doesn't happen often, luckily, we do need an approved method for suspending riding privileges that provides due process to a suspended rider. Uh so the department can do a short-term suspension. and it comes as a recommendation to the city manager who would issue a long-term suspension and it does provide a due process provision while that that suspended writer can appeal to you guys as the board of commissioners who would act as a jury to hear whether that suspension would be upheld or not. It's based on or modeled after a process that we've used in the parks department for several years that has worked very well.

Thank you. Any discussion? Okay, roll call, please. Commissioner Sanford? Yes. Mayor Watson? Yes. Commissioner Mager, yes. Mayor Pro Tim Glenn,

yes. Thank you. Motion passes. Item seven, municipal order, please. Municipal Order 26-20225, a municipal order authorizing and directing the mayor to execute an application for body armor grant funding through the office of the Kentucky Attorney General Department of Criminal Investigations in the amount of $254,882, the proceeds of which will be utilized by the City of Owensboro Police Department to purchase body armor, no match required, from the city, read for approval on one reading this 18th day of November 2025. Thank you. I'll make a motion to approve this municipal order. Could I have a second, please? Second. City manager, please.

The city clerk's summary was was good. Again, this municipal order for a grant specifically for body armor requesting 95 helmets and 11 shields for a total of 254,882. No match is required from the city. Thank you. Any other discussion? Hearing none. All in favor indicate by Is this roll call? All in favor indicate by saying I. I oppose. Motion carries. Thank you. Item 7B.

Municipal order 27-2025. A municipal order authorizing and directing the mayor to execute an application for the Patrick Ley bulletproof vest partnership initiative grant administered by the Bureau of Justice Assistance designed to provide critical resources to law enforcement jurisdictions for the purpose of reimbursing the Owensboro Police Department for 50% of the total cost of $29,746 expended to purchase 35 new bulletproof vests. That amount being $14,873. Read for approval on one reading this 18th day of November 2025. Thank you. I'll make a motion to approve this municipal order. Could I have a second, please? Second. City manager.

Her summary was excellent. So I have nothing to add. Thank you. Any other discussion? Hearing none. All in favor indicate by saying I. I. All oppose. Motion carries. Thank you. Item eight. Yes, sir. Just two personal appointments tonight. promotional probationary status of Ted Johnson, probationary full-time non-Ivil service promotional appointment to captain with the fire department effective November 30th. Tyler Grant, probationary full-time non-Ivil service promotional appointment to lieutenant with the fire department effective December 28th. Thank you. I'll make a motion to approve these probationary status appointments. Could I have a second, please? Second. Any discussion? Hearing none, all in favor indicate by saying I. I. All oppose. Motion carries. Item 8B.

Uh, just a couple of comments. Uh, first, of course, next week is Thanksgiving, so city hall will be closed Thursday and Friday of next week in observance of Are you cooking? That holiday. I'm not cooking, mayor. That would not be a good uh good thing. No one would want to eat it. We'd be going out for spaghetti or something probably if I were cooking. So, hope everyone can spend time with their family. And just a couple of related events as we approach the holiday season. Let's kick off really the the uh tree lighting ceremony is Friday at 5:00 pm. does look like there may be some inclement weather, so stay tuned. We may have to adjust that, but right now scheduled for 5:00 pm on Friday. And then the Christmas parade is Saturday at 4:30. So, where is that tree lighting? What place? Uh, it is downtown in Smother's Park. Smother's Park, not McConnell Plaza.

Smother's Park. Smothers Park. Oh, yeah. Over there by the right between the fountain and the restrooms. Yeah. Okay, gotcha. I saw him put that thing together. That's really something. Okay. U communication from elected officials. Commissioner Sampler.

Thanks, Mayor. Uh just a couple of comments. Uh I want to thank everybody who helped put on the Veterans Day parade. Um job well done. I know it takes a lot of work and effort to get uh all that organized. I want to thank him for that. And um you mentioned the Christmas parade and the tree lighting and just I want to wish everybody a happy Thanksgiving and spend a lot of time with your family and friends because that's what it's for. Uh we're very blessed in our community and our state and country. So uh enjoy. Thank you, Mayor.

Thank you. Um yeah, that's my favorite holiday of the year by far. and I too and and we had a better turnout for the Veterans Day parade than we've had in a long time. So that's very important because we would not be doing what we're doing without their those heroic efforts. So uh Commissioner Mager,

thank you mayor. Wanted to congratulate the five uh graduates for our own fire department. Uh that was a amazing event Saturday. So thank you and and excited to see them. Uh and then wanted to also remind people that uh November 29th they're having the world premiere of Bachelor Santa at River Park Center. So that's putting Owensboro on the uh all over. So that that's great. And then I just wanted to also thank everybody and wish them a happy Thanksgiving. I think I got a little cameo in that too. They didn't pay anything. Come to see it. Yeah. There

pro Tim. Uh want to thank uh Adrian and Beth and all of our and uh Shaye for a great uh preparation and execution of the neighborhood alliance uh uh dinner. Thought that was a lovely event. Uh it's always good to be able to bring everybody in the community who's working so hard in various areas to upgrade our community. So thanks again to our staff for the great work they did. I thought it was a nice evening. Um, Amanda's here, so I get to thank her. Uh, went out golfing and you've got new signs up. They look great. At least I'm sure you have it on the 18 hole, too, but I'm not good enough for that. So, uh, but the nine hole, it looked they look really good. So, congrats on that. Um, and then I want to echo what Jeff and and, uh, Curtis have said about the other events. The OFD graduation was a very nice event. Want to thank OFD for letting us use their vote for the veterans parade. That was great. Uh and uh so uh looking forward to the Christmas break. That's it. Happy Thanksgiving. Okie dokie. All right. Now we'll go to item 10, open public forum. Members of the audience may address the board of commissioners on any matter of public concern that was not on the agenda. Comments are limited to issues within the scope and responsibility of the commission. Commission meetings are held to conduct city business for the benefit of Orangeboro citizens and taxpayers. At this time, anyone who wishes to address the city commission must can make their way to the podium. To be recognized, speakers must state their name and address for the clerk's record and limit their remarks to three minutes or less. So, open mic. Well,

okie dokie. We got a bite. Apologize. I'm not a public speaker or anything like that. My name is Georgia Bryant. I live at 3434 Professional Park Drive and um what I've come to u make you guys aware of is um the situation as far as like carts on the transit system. Um explain that a little bit please.

So um there are some of us Well, I ride the bus pretty much daily. It's how I get to work. It's how I get to doctor's appointments. It's how I get to the grocery store. Um, Lyft isn't really an option. Um, you have to have a bank account. Not everyone does. Um, and it can be cost prohibitive. Um, and so we have carts to put our groceries in. the past, I'd say month and a half, maybe two months, they have told us that um we have to fold our carts up on the bus and be able to set all our groceries in our lap and um so they're refusing people to get on the bus. Um it's been suggested that, you know, you make several trips to go to the grocery store. Well, it takes 3 hours for me to get to the grocery store and get home. And I can't, like I said, I can't always afford a lift. Um, there was an instance where where there was um a 78-year-old woman. She went to Walmart on Frederick Street and uh she had her little cart, which um I understand, you know, we can't block the aisles or anything like that. I put mine in between my legs and it does not stick out farther than my feet. She purchased all her items for her Thanksgiving dinner. The bus pulled up. She went to board. You know, she was told she would have to remove the items, put them in her lap, and fold her cart up. And she informed the driver that she couldn't hold her turkey and everything in her lap. So they left her there and this was the bus that left the

station at 6:05. So it was dark and she was stuck out there at Walmart, 78 years old. Um I'm not even sure how she got home. Um and so people can't go to the um laundromat and we're just kind of stuck. It's like we don't know what to do in this situation. because they're not allowing us access with our carts anymore. And the rules actually say that I got from the bus station. Um, small carts are permitted but cannot be in aisles or in pathways of doors. Cannot take up a location intended for mobility devices or wheelchairs. It only says strollers have to be folded. And this is just something I don't know if you guys can address or but it's really an issue that we've got.

Council, I can speak to uh Vicky Pennington with OTS about that. I I know that they have rules and regulations governing cards, but I can address that with her. Thank you. Okay. Yeah. We were made aware of this a couple days ago. So Stephen Franklin and I discussed it actually today. Okay. So, we're looking into it. Um, of course, the transit is is a division of of public works under Steven's preview. So, we're looking into it. Hopefully, we'll have more information soon. We we discuss it 15 minutes before the meeting started just briefly. We could we get your contact information afterwards so we can sure we can get back to you. So, no problem. Okay. Thank you all very much. Thank you.

Anyone else? I got pork chops waiting at home. Anybody else? Okay, Barbara, here I come. I'll make a motion to adjurnn. Could I have a second, please? Second. Okay. All in favor indicate saying I. I. We are ajourned.