Budget Committee - Regular Meeting

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Bye.

Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. so so Roll call, please. Vice Chair Yang. Here.

Council Member Bowie? Here. Council Member Coleman?

Here.

Council Member Kim?

Here.

Council Member Jost?

Here.

Council President Naker? Here. Chair Johnson? Here. Seven present, zero absent.

Thank you, Tara. So we are just continuing the wonderful series when it comes to the 2027 budget. We have in front of us the St. Paul Fire Department who will present today. Welcome, Chief Melquist.

Yes, thank you. Good morning, City Council Budget Chair Johnson, City Council President Aker, and distinguished council members. Thank you for the opportunity to be here and present. I want to take a moment to thank the women and men of the St. Paul Fire Department who are here with us today. I appreciate it and also recognize the Local 21 leadership that is here. Thank you. My name is Jeremiah Melquist, and I'm Assistant Chief of Operations. I tend to talk a little fast, so I'll try to slow down today. In the fire profession, we use a lot of acronyms, so if there's anything that you don't know what the acronym stands for, please, by all means, raise your hand and I can explain. The first slide here is the agenda. It's pretty self-explanatory, so we'll go to the second slide and jump into it. with the executive summary our department goals and priorities in 2027 are to maintain nfpa response times to meet and mitigate emergencies that our residents experience we need to effectively meet the projected three to five percent increase in calls for service in 2027 while maintaining operational effectiveness and service quality we also need to preserve frontline staffing and unit availability We are dedicated to creating a new strategic plan that will address EMS capacity and use data to make deployment changes to meet the demand and incident volume increases. And we plan to do that. We're having all the stakeholders at the table to come up with that plan. We will also continue to lobby for increased staffing to meet the needs of the community while simultaneously taking care of our firefighters and minimizing overtime. I think it's important to recognize that this is a balanced package that includes some reductions, some deployment changes, some revenue growth, and some needed operational additions. Like most of the city departments, most of our budget, 87% to be exact, is assigned to the employee salaries and benefits. Our net staffing change is two fewer FTEs. Five positions have been removed, a CARES chief and three CARES EMT FTEs. and one PSGFT is going to be unfilled. And we also added three EMS chiefs for a net of minus two. This plan avoids layoffs, but the attrition creates operational risk that needs to be monitored throughout the entire 2027 fiscal year. The summary of, I'm going to jump on this one.

Next slide, please.

Our 2026 budget recap. We're gonna jump into CARES. CARES is our community alternative response for emergency services team. It is a presently dedicated rig of two trained EMTs that specialize in behavioral health emergencies. Year to date, CARES has responded to 918 calls. The rig works the hours of 0700 to 1900, Monday and Tuesday, and 1100 to 1900 on Wednesday and Thursday. CAR 70 is the CARES coordinator, and that's Chief Gibbs. Chief Gibbs has been on 206 calls in 2026, but beyond that, he's out every day engaging with the community, engaging with the patients and the residents that we serve that need the outreach help. Plus, he's been going to all three encampments throughout the year, providing water on those days that were 9,500 degrees, and then offering options for medical, mental health, and housing needs. Our new revenue for 2026, we projected it to be a 2.3 million increase with the changes we made at the beginning of the year for EMS transports. After quarter two, we were at approximately 120% of our projected increase. We believe that this may double, but we will not have those final numbers until the first or second quarter of 2027 to see what that impact really is for 2026. We have a fire academy starting on October 5th of 32 recruits. As of today, we're short 30 FTEs, so this will fill those spots. We also have anticipated retirements of four to seven employees before the start of 2027. On August 27th, the St. Paul Fire started a whole blood program. Our first administration in the field occurred early Sunday morning, September 6th. A huge factor in the patient's survival from this incident was that whole blood that was given. We administered our second blood this past weekend. And from the medics that were on scene with that patient, they saw huge impacts and increases in the vitals of that patient. And talking to the doctors down at Regent's Hospital ER, it sounds like the first patient was a shooting victim and probably is going to survive this based on the whole blood program and the new cutting edge technology that St. Paul Fire paramedics are presenting in the field. To get this program up and running, we partnered with Regions, and we got a $25,000 grant to start the whole blood program, and it's something that's here to stay. We also have ECMO, mobile ECMO. So they're running out of station one. They're responding to incident scenes and providing ECMO services in the field. That's extracorporeal membrane oxygenation. It's an advanced form of temporary life support that pumps blood outside the body to an artificial lung machine, adding oxygen and removing carbon dioxide before returning to the patient. With this technology and this service, the residents, visitors, and people of St. Paul that experience a cardiac arrest, if they're able to be part of this ECMO program, their chance of survival double or triple. So we feel very good about where we're going with EMS and that we're providing the best care possible. Next slide, please. Some updates on recent initiatives. F-Shift. We started the F-Shift in 2025 on a trial basis with a district chief and saw an immediate benefit. In early 2026, I sought out approval to expand the F-Shift from the mayor's office and we received it. We expanded the F-Shift in March of 2026 to three chiefs, five captains, and five FEOs. Through August, the F-Shift has filled open shifts every pay period. The cost to implement the F-shift for the three, five, and five above and beyond our authorized promoted spots is $266,000. It has produced overtime savings through the end of August of $818,000 by filling open shifts that normally would have been sent out for pre-order for overtime. We're trying to be fiscally responsible and thinking outside the box and find other ways to attack our staffing to balance the shifts and to try to minimize overtime. We started a paramedic regions partnership. Our third year starts this next week. just started pardon me just started last week so far we've had 28 employees of our own employees go to med school through regions right here in our city and 28 employees have graduated paramedic school we're sending 15 more paramedics this year and this is something that in the past 20 years we'd send our employees to med school say every five six years and it's one of the biggest morale crushers on the street is we didn't have enough paramedics in the street so they were always getting moved and It's a need we have with all the cutting-edge technology that we're going with, life-saving interventions that we're doing in the street. We thought it was important we send paramedics or our employees to paramedics every single year, increase that number with the end goal of being 100% paramedics at some point in time in the future. Fire Station 7 on the east side, that's been open within the last year. It brought back a fire resource to the east side, Engine 7. Fire Station 3 on the west 7th opened. We're placing assets where they're needed. If you look at a heat map, and there's one in the back that's divided down into wards. If you look at the heat map of the overall city, downtown is just... large blob of runs. We are very busy coming out of Station 3 and Station 8. Five years ago, Station 8 was open and we had one ALS transport rig and one BLS transport rig. Now with Station 3 opening, we actually have five rigs, three ALS rigs and two BLS rigs. And ALS is Advanced Life Support, BLS is Basic Life Support. My point is that we have five transport rigs that can handle the run volume in downtown and take the pressure off of other companies and surrounding areas having to come into the downtown area. We're using the data to address our deployment and staffing needs. We partnered with the University of Minnesota Hemsley Charitable Trust to get 15 Lucas devices donated. And I'll backtrack a little bit for the ECMO. To be an ECMO patient, you have to be on a Lucas device, which is a manual device providing the cardiac compressions. We applied for a second electric engine grant and successfully received it. We ordered our second RTX. We got a $1.35 million grant from the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency, and that second RTX electric engine will be delivered in May of 27. We also received new ZOL monitors for all EMS rigs, an upgrade that was long overdue. Next slide.

Assistant Chief Melquist, we have a couple questions. One question from Council President Eager.

Thanks, Chair. This isn't a question, but just a commendation. I really want to admire the work that you've done on creating the F-shift in particular. We've been talking a lot about overtime at this table and the creative way in which you figured out how to fill those gaps in service with a regular shift that was called an F-shift rather than through overtime. I think it's something that we should try to emulate in other departments if we can, and just really want to credit you for doing that.

Thank you, Council President Baker, Committee Chair Johnson. I really appreciate that.

And we also have a question from Council Member Kim.

It's maybe more of a follow-up question, but I wonder then around the creative ways that you are doing staffing, but how does... My understanding is that the best that we've ever done with our OT is when we hired over and above our authorized strength. So I guess my question here is a little more related to staffing, but I appreciate sort of the creativity of how we're shifting staff. But I also have a wondering, which you don't have to respond to immediately, but around sort of the fatigue of the staff then and how we're creating those shifts within the existing staff. to reduce overtime. So I get here, it is something that we absolutely are focused on. And I also just want to be cognizant that it's not to the detriment of staff in the way that we are doing that while under our sworn authorized strength.

Correct. So, yep, yep, I understand the question. Council Member Kim, you are 100% correct when it comes to staffing. For minimizing overtime and for the safety and health and wellness of our firefighters, the best way is to get a strategic plan together, get stakeholders there, and find out what that actual number is for FTEs that we need to successfully staff without burning out our employees and to minimize overtime. That is the way to go with that.

Yeah, if I just may have a quick follow-up. Yeah, go ahead. Part of it, because I heard you say earlier, like, you know, part of this is striking a balance, a balance of shifting both the budget and also our personnel. And so it's kind of at that sort of comment is what kind of makes me interested around, you know, how is it that we're staffing, but also in recognition that while we want to be fiscally responsible, the last thing that we want to be doing is bringing out our staff.

Correct. So for the F-shift, two things come into play. So they bid to the F-shift. They're not placed on the F-shift, and that's in partnership with Local 21. And then in a work period, we either work a 96-hour or 120-hour in a two-week period. So it's either four or five 24-hour shifts. So they take a look and work with the... deputy chief operations of which days are open when we're in overtime mode and they pick the days they want to work so it helps them with their home life with you know pick and choose the shifts they want to work and i'll just point out that the balancing of the shifts is we have a bid system and for whatever reason right now between that and long-term sick and light duty. The B shift, we can have a day if the B shift has 120 personnel on and our full staffing is 116. And then the very next day, the A shift will be working and they'll have staffing of 100 and we're in overtime mode for 16 spots. So the five captains, five FEOs and three chiefs, they'll pick the open days. So say all of them picked that A shift day and there's openings for them to fill, we could fill back to 113 and only have three overtime instead of 16 overtime. We're trying to get creative, give the employee the flexibility, balance the shifts, and really attack overtime. We're going to get into overtime a little bit later here, and that is an ongoing issue. But what you stated earlier about the hiring and hiring above our FTEs or finding out what the actual FTEs we need to staff appropriately and to minimize overtime is huge in the next three years.

Assistant Chief Milkwist, would it be possible, and not to put him on the spot, but because CARES is a topic, would it be possible to ask a question to Chief Gibbs?

Most certainly. Chief Gibbs, would you join me, please?

Welcome, Mr. Gibbs. And apologies in advance to put you on the spot. But I know we actually heard from the St. Paul Police Department last week. And there was a pullout of the non-fatal shooting unit. And they talked a little bit about some of the stats regarding their work. And they used the non-fatal shooting unit as an example because it was an innovative solution to an ongoing issue that we've had in the city. And they talked about the stats. They talked about some of the things that really made that program within the police department, that division within the police department effective. Could you share a little bit about the CARES division and the work that you've been doing since it began and just a little bit about what made that an important investment?

Sure. Thank you, Council Member Johnson. I think probably one of the more important issues for CARES now is just the populations that we're working with. We have an unseen population, which is mostly in our highly visible settings, our homeless people. We're dealing with exposure issues, wounds, overdose risk, behavioral crisis, addiction, displacement, and repeated system contact. What we deal with more than that is our unseen population. And that consists of people with dementia, MS, multiple sclerosis, traumatic injury, stroke-related impairment, mental illness, and most importantly, just the inability to manage at home and people that are disconnected from family members. So that consists of most of our calls. We get the repeated calls from contact from captains or EMS coordinators. They're saying, hey, we got an issue here. We have these repeated calls for this individual. Can you just look into it and see what needs to happen? And so CARES is beyond just responding to real-time crisis. We're asking, what's beyond this call? What are the other issues? We're connecting people with services, trying to identify where the county is with their involvement. We are initiating waivers, whether it's neglect, self-neglect. A lot of times we're finding family abuse. There's sometimes just neglect in general, but But it just requires that we dig in deeper. I think the dedicated unit that Chief Melquist mentioned is important to us to be able to maintain it. We have, you know, the relationships are important. Continuity of care is important. Just being able to discern what's going on behind these situations over time, repetitive involvement for our staff. We're able to discern, okay, this is what's going on. These are the connections that need to be made so that we can mitigate these situations as quickly as possible. Also, the fact that we're often operating beyond the normal times of service. And so that's what's required of us. We try to respond to that. These situations, I try to respond to as many as I can. I give people my personal number and say, if this is not a life-threatening situation where your life is not in danger of someone else's, if you're just feeling anxious or in a crisis, can you call me? And I've also instructed EMS coordinators to give me a call if something happens. If that happens, I can go out whatever time it is and try to mitigate the situation and help get them the help that they need. It's not the same as our basic care or BLS response. I think it's an ongoing issue in our city and I think it requires our specialized attention now and it will probably require more attention in the future.

Deputy Chief Gibbs, thank you so much for just kind of giving that overview. I think it's really important as we talk about anything that was implemented as well for a specific purpose, like who they serve and just kind of the scope of the work. Assistant Chief Melquist, I appreciate hearing the breakdown of calls and just overall responses that this team has carried. I think that impact and that is not only just the data, but the statistic behind that and the overwhelming impact that you all have had. I want to take the time to acknowledge that over the past few years as a council member, this council has even placed back the CARES program because we recognize that. I know that every budget cycle is different, but I do want to acknowledge the work of you and your team obviously of all the St. Paul Fire Department, but I want to personally acknowledge that when the CARES team started as an alternative response effort, it was really important to place this into effect. So I just want to say thank you for your work and for the entire CARES team. I think it's never fun to necessarily see the division itself being talked about in the budget of whether to fund it or not. So I just wanted to take a minute to acknowledge the work that you all do. Thank you. I know Councilmember Kim had a question or comment, but I'll hand it over to you.

I do. Thank you. I appreciate the gratitude for the services. I think, you know, as budget chair last year, this was a council priority for us to keep, and for a lot of reasons, one of which I'll name is the ability to create... the extra time that folks need to be cared for if it's not an emergent or a higher acuity call. And my understanding of the creation of the CARES division was so that BLS and ALS and up the chain. I have questions around how the reduction of this CARES division creates a strain upstream with staffing. So yes to the value of what you're offering, but also how does this shifting of staff change the ability for then BLS to take the extra time that you're just talking about? And I understand that the inner facility transfers creates a standard amount of revenue that the city could take in, which is objectively a good thing. And I do believe that the cost to keep cares is worth it, just for the sake of the ability for you to take care of the folks that you just named, that unseen population. The last thought is during the State of the Youth Address, this was one of the youth's priorities, and for the exact reason that you just named. A parent will call, they're unsure why their child is feeling anxious, and specifically it was someone that was deeply impacted by Operation Metro Search. They were bound to their house, they were afraid to leave, they didn't even go to school, and they didn't have, sometimes families aren't connected to the mental health resources that they need, so what do they do? They call 911, and the person that is coming through the door is someone through the CARES unit that's gonna provide that family the resources, the time and attention that they need, and help calm that, in this case, that child down. And so I think the value of what you're offering is present, and as we think about staffing and the reduction of a budget, meaning reduction of services, I think it's sort of eating at the fire budget on both ends. And I just really want us to be cognizant that taking the CARES division away creates a strain as the emergent needs go up the ladder for staffing and fire. But thank you so much for all the work that you're doing. I just wanted to lift up that this absolutely was a budget priority for the youth in the city of St. Paul.

Thank you.

Council Member Bowie.

Thank you, Chair Johnson. I just also want to make a comment. I want to say I appreciate you taking the pause to recognize the CARES Division. I mean, like you had mentioned, like my colleagues had mentioned before, this was a priority, you know, for us in the past. I just wanted to just share that and recognize how impactful the CARES team was, particularly at the Rondo Community Library and some of the challenges that was taking place on Daly University. And even really getting a chance to talk with many of the deputy chiefs and the firefighters and hearing about the care fatigue that went into place for some of our areas. populations that really need these services needs attention and needs a more specialized type of care. And I just want to say, you know, before, long before we even had our safety specialists, you know, had an opportunity to talk with former Chief Inks and really learn about the CARES unit. And, you know, even in this recent, this current budget proposal, just making the calls of like, hey, why every single time since I've been on the council, the CARES has been up for, on the chopping block, for lack of a better word. And I just think I want us to be more innovative. Of course, I don't I think it's important for us to look at where we have, you know, duplicative, like, efforts. But in this instance, especially for our firefighters that have a more specialized way of approaching certain emergencies, I think it's really important to see, you know, maybe if we're not able to solve this math problem, but, like, how do we ensure that the training, the institutional knowledge that you have been able to nurture and grow across the department, how that can be effective in other departments as well. And I'll just say this as well. I think for someone who have a really growing aging population, when you talked about the dementia and talking about mental illness, and how people are really struggling with managing life. I think this is so important. And yes, there's a price tag to it, but what the price tag says not on there is the impact. of this care division no longer existing. And I would like to hear particularly, how do we ensure that there's still continuity around this? And if you can speak to other aspects around the care division, which I have recognized in the past, around trainings. Are those trainings something that can be done internally? Are these type of trainings that we can probably utilize as a way of training other departments or training other cities? I'm just curious to know what other aspects that we can protect some portion of the CARES division, even if it's not the emergency services, but the knowledge base that you receive from the CARES training.

Sure, I can answer that. You're exactly right. The work that's been done over the last few years and the knowledge that we've gained with the CARES team and with Chief Gibbs is invaluable. One of the things I want to touch point on is would you come down and look at, okay, a cut at this significant, where are we going to get that? There's certain barriers that we have. There's certain contractual language as far as what you can and can't do. within the fire department with the Firefighters Local 21. And then you start looking at the BLS program as a whole. That's a career pathway. It's a very diverse pathway. It's 46% women. It's 43% people of color. And so we're kind of stuck with, OK, how are we going to meet this goal? Where can we take the money from to meet this cut? And so the proposed deployment plan was to train all the BLS employees in CARES Response CIT, which is Crisis Intervention Training. at approximately $1,000 an employee. But the thought process was then that we'd have 24-7 coverage. Chief Gibbs, he's the deputy chief of CARES and the CARES coordinator, but he would stay on as a deputy chief of EMS and be the point of contact and the CARES coordinator, even though that title went away. Any reduction does have an impact on staffing, on deployment, upstream. What that does, it's a domino effect on firefighters' health and their safety. But we're faced, you know, we're all in this. At the end of the day, there's only so much money. We had to figure out a way to... come up with a budget where we can still provide the same great services that we provide every single day, not lose that knowledge and that experience that we have, and try to adjust and do the best we can. Firefighters are good at that, but it does put a lot of strain on the CARES team, the dedicated team, the BLS program, and then the inter-facility transports. Now they're not available because They're on inter-facility transport, so they're not available to respond to a CARES run. So Chief Gibbs is alone to respond to that run, or we're taking an ALS rig, which leaves a fire resource out of service. So it does have a domino effect, and any reduction will have that, but we're kind of stuck on how can we make this work and how do we meet the demands of this 2027 budget. But great points, Council Member Bowie. Thank you.

And thank you guys just for being able to answer a couple of those questions as well on the spot during they come up organically in conversation. So I know we don't always get to prep you in the pre-meet. So I'll hand it over to Vice Chair Yang.

Thank you, Chair Johnson. I first want to echo your remarks at the very beginning, Chief Malquis. The gratitude to all of the folks in our fire department. I want to say thank you all for the very important and life-saving work you do. Thank you both for the presentation today. And also I want to echo what my colleagues said about the CARES team. Deputy Chief Gibbs, you and your team have been phenomenal every single time that my staff and I have reached out, whether it's getting an inquiry or even a concern from a constituent about homelessness in Ward 6, you all have always been there. And so I want to say thank you for your responsiveness and being very communicative. I am a very strong supporter of our CARES team. And I believe that that is reflected really across this council. And you all can see that clearly, even when the CARES team The CARES team was on the chopping block. We fought really hard to make sure that we were funding that work. And it brings me a lot of heartache when I think about that because it makes me wonder, well, what if we no longer are here? Or let's say every year there always has to be that effort to fund and save the CARES team. I just wonder, what does the future look like for that? And so I want to acknowledge that I think it's very unsustainable to keep Just like operating in this way. And one of the things I'm always curious about is without the CARES team, I'm trying to really understand ideally, like what is the ideal scenario for what partnership between the county and the city looks like for that? I know that in conversations with the mayor, and I feel strongly and agree with this too, I think it's really important for there to be a delegation of responsibilities. I do believe that the city has taken on a lot of work in this field and would really like to see, again, a clear line of partnership when it comes to work around homelessness and serving our unhoused community. And so I was wondering, can you all talk a bit about what that ideal scenario does look like when it comes to the city and county partnership?

First, I just want to say, um, I think that, um, regardless of what the scenario presents in the future, very near future, um, we, we have to maintain some kind of dedicated service. And so if that means me, uh, setting aside two individuals and saying, Hey, we need to, these are the issues we need to keep, uh, keep an, keep an eye on and follow up on and so on. And so, uh, With regard to the county, the situation is this, is that we respond to the crisis in real time. The county has all of the resources and services needed to mitigate these situations. The difficulty we're experiencing is that with each entity in the county, there does not seem to be one person that's accountable to seeing things through. And so a lot of times it just takes me coming down here in uniform and going into the county office and saying, hey, we need to follow up on this caddy waiver. We need to do this or we need to do that. And so I feel like the county is now being brought to the center of the discussion with regard to at least the homelessness, and it's being said, hey, we need you to do what you say you're doing. And so... From a care standpoint, all we can do is just reach out and follow up. And it may entail calling someone five or ten times a day, doing as best we can to establish meetings, following up with other service providers and saying, you know, I'll fill out a self-neglect report. Will you do this? And so just interagency communication. working with other agencies and just trying to gather a collective of support to move these issues through the county. It's still a challenge, but our posture towards the county has been that we're not Complaining about you. We want to work with you. We want to see you work better But but we're gonna always bring these these issues to the forefront when they come up.

So Thank You deputy chief Gibbs, you know and I think one thing that I will just share for as I've been going through the budget for this year and I Also, because we've had similar conversations last year, too, about the CARES division. One thing I would share for the fire department, as well, is just taking, I'm a realistic person when I take the budget as what it is proposed. I really would encourage us all to, you know, if this does go as proposed and we're talking about how the work of the CARES division will be embedded within the fire department, I think to some of the other comments earlier with Councilmember Kim as well around staff levels, I think we should begin to really to track if we aren't already. We have the call data, we have what they're for, but when it comes to that partnership and being able to talk to the county as well about what we're currently seeing, I think there could be a lot of communication between the city and the county about that as we determine what is and is not the city's Role and the county's role within it for future conversations, especially if it starts to be You know my concern and I think the concern I have about this is that the 900 can you repeat the data that you mentioned the 900 calls?

I think 206 for chief Gibbs and 918 for the CARES program since the start of the year.

OK. And so just with that in mind, those calls won't stop. They'll continue. And I think we all acknowledge that. We all come from that place and that value standpoint. And my understanding of where the CARES department division was created was because that wasn't necessarily wasn't necessarily the role of the county in the past, and that hasn't necessarily been the role that they've played in the time being for the work that the CARES Division does. So if that changes within the year because we have just chosen to try to shift that from a budgetary standpoint, I'd love to know that by the end of next year. If we're not seeing that change, then I also hope we re-evaluate in the future for future discussions. Because I think there seems to be just an aspect of, well, if we don't necessarily fund this work, it may shift to another government entity. But if that doesn't actually end up happening, and we also start to see that within our fire department, that that now is on the EMS team and there are calls and now we have different stations operating at different capacities or staff levels because we are dedicating resources and time that could go towards something else to that. Because we no longer have the CARES division, I think it would be really important to know. So I'm just setting that stage up for future conversations because I think That's something that I'm hearing from our discussion. I did see Chair Jost's hand and Chair Bowie's hand, and then I may move us along just so we can get through the slides from it. And Mr. Gibbs, I appreciate you just being here and being able to be put on the spot again. So Chair Jost, and then we'll go to Chair Bowie, and then we'll continue forward with the presentation.

Thanks, Chair Johnson. I'll make this very quick because you kind of said something that I was thinking. Since the... The calls and the services that the CARES team provides will be absorbed into the fire department. Could you just talk a little bit more about what the impact of that might be? I am a little bit concerned about it because we've been making progress on overtime with the F-shift and wanting to minimize the strain on the fire department. But what will that look like? And I guess I'm concerned about the sustainability to be able to continue providing all of these services.

That's a great question. Thank you, Council Member Jost. It will have an impact. Our runs are going up 3% to 5% every single year. So we don't have a dedicated CARES team. And the BLS has taken those runs. They'll respond as a CARES team with one of our BLS RICs. If we're doing inter-facility transports or the BLS rigs are out on alpha runs and they're not available, then it comes down to one of our ALS rigs going out. We have 18 ALS rigs, counting the two power rigs. We have 16 that are attached to a fire engine. 15 of them are dual-staffed. So if an engine comes, if Medic 19 has to go out Your ward do you want to cares run because we don't have cares or BLS available to take that run now that fire agent? Sits out of service, so you don't have ALS coverage or fire coverage for the time being while we're on that run So there's pressure that's added There's pressure that's added to the firefighters as we're already seeing huge increases and and run volume and average runs the downtown rigs are some of the busiest rigs not in the state but in the nation and just so you know how busy we are. So it will have an impact, but we're forced to do the best we can at the end of the day with what we have. And the one thing that firefighters are good at is they're still going to show up on that scene, whether there's supposed to be seven rigs there or two rigs there, and they're going to mitigate the issue, and they're going to take care of the residents, the visitors, and the people of St. Paul the best we can.

I guess if I could just ask one more question. Thank you for elaborating on that. Do you think that from a budgetary standpoint, it looks like the elimination of the CARES division is like $700,000. Are we going to see that come back potentially, maybe not all of it, but some of it in overtime as a result of those services being absorbed by the fire department?

It's possible. We have a slide for the overtime. Thank you, Council Member Jones. We have a slide for the overtime coming up here to show just how drastic and what the pressure is right now. And that's based on FTEs, which is based on the budget. So it could have a factor. And I think the best way to go about whether or not, wherever this budget lands at the end of the year, when the Mayor's Office, City Council comes to a resolution on the budget, I think it's important that we track moving forward the partnership with Ramsey County what cares looks like whether it stays the same as a dedicated rig just what impact that's having and then also looking at if it wasn't there or if it's not there what impact that's having on our BLS rigs on our responses to to the unsheltered and to the Behavioral health runs and then also what that domino effect is up the upstream like councilmember Kim had spoke about earlier We need to track that and then be proactive in coming up with a strategic plan that sets us up for success, a three-year, four-year, five-year plan, and address those situations.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Chair Bowie. Thank you, Chair Johnson. I just have a question particularly around, just like the Deputy Chief Gibbs had mentioned something about Ramsey County not having this accountability, like a one person accountable to where the resources are deployed to an individual, or who owns that, who manages that. And I would just say, just in St. Paul, in the city, we also have accountability across the where a lot of departments are holding the same type of vulnerable population. And just even around the caseload around CARES, we know ONS, Familiar Faces, CAO has the Ethos program, SPPD has a community engagement. And we can, I'm sure, there's a lot other staff that holds this work within our parks and our libraries, especially our safety specialists in our libraries. And I'm just curious, as interim chief and understanding that we're going to be hiring a new chief, with the new model that we have, particularly the assistant mayor system that we have, has there been more cross-departmental management of this case? Because what I'm hearing right now is that this reduction is going to create a strain, right? But how are we, what type of systems exist within the administration to ensure that if there's a strain on, within FIRE, that we can tap into ONS? Are there, you know, we can use our friends with familiar faces to help with that? So the services aren't going to be, there's not going to be a gap in services because we are all working together. And I'm just, I understand like within a structure where a budget committee, you know, we're looking in silos. But one of the things, particularly in the last presentation, Chief Henry had mentioned that he appreciated hearing from other departments. Can you just speak to, are we on the edge of having more of a cross-departmental partnership, particularly reflected within this budget?

Yes, I think that's the direction. Council Member Bowie, thank you for the question. I think that's the direction we're headed. I will say this, all the teams, the outreach teams and the service teams that you spoke about, we meet weekly. Each team does an amazing job in their swim lane and what they're handling. What we're seeing and what we're learning through experience is that the issues with the unsheltered and the encampments and the behavioral health is even a heavier lift than we thought it was going to be. And I think that the collaboration partnership among all the departments within the city is the only way we're going to get out of this. So I think that's where we're headed is more of a collaboration and working together. FIRE does an excellent job on the initial response, the EMS, the first 24 hours. I think the other departments do an excellent job in their outreach down line, whether that's a week, a month, whatever it may be. Chief Gibbs is a single... Single entity that is doing that as a cares coordinator, and he does a great job But even chief gives it no matter how amazing he is even that's a heavy lift for one person So it has to be a combination and and when we speak about the colony I'll say this I've been in my position as assistant chief for a little over three years and in the last six seven months We're starting to see the county come to the table come to the meetings a lot more communication with the county So I think we're moving in the right direction of trying to figure out who? what the roles are, what the responsibilities are, and how can we solve this together, collaboratively, not city taking care of it, county taking care of it, and pointing fingers. So I think we're on the right track, and that's where we need to go if we want to solve this issue. Thank you.

Thanks, Assistant Chief. And we'll keep going with the presentation just to get through some of the slides. I know we have a lot of time. We have about 45 minutes to go through the remaining slides, but we are on slide six. I want us to be able to get through quite a few. Sounds good.

Good thing I'm a fast talker. Thank you, Chair Johnson. All right, so we'll move on from CARES and $719,000. The other reductions that we're looking at is reduction of two deputy chiefs to their certified positions of captains, a savings of $114,000. I think it's important to notice, like I talked about before, about how trying to come up with a budget reduction of this size, there's some tough decisions that need to be made. This is a command structure reduction. It's not a frontline apparatus or a staffing reduction. PSG worker, we have a PSG worker that comes out of the general fund. That individual, that employee, is going to retire in early 2027, and you're going to hear me talk a little bit later on another slide about our number of long-term sick and injured and light duty personnel. So the responsibilities that come with this worker, we're going to use light duty to absorb that and have that cost savings. The biggest one here is the increased attrition, and this proposal assumes that we will not have any BLS or firefighter academies in 2027. The savings accumulated as positions become vacant throughout the year, and we usually have 25 to 35 firefighters that retire or go off disabled that leave the job every single year. Attrition provides the largest savings in the package, but it's not risk-free. Vacancies can increase over time, BLS staffing can decrease inter-facility transports and CARES capabilities that we just got done speaking about. We're going through an ISO rating right now, and ISO looks at fire staffing and fire coverage, so that's at risk. And then we may want and need to expand the F-shift to assist with shift balancing to cover more vacancies and reduce reliance on overtime. We have to be careful about the health and wellness and not overtaxing A, B, C, or F-shift. Overtime will always be an issue or factor in fire EMS, but there is ways out of it, and quite simply, you have to hire your way out of it. Next slide. Our 2027 proposed revenue changes. For EMS, these changes, we come in here, we came here last year with $2.3 million, and we feel like we're being conservative. We want to promise and make sure we meet what we tell you or what we present to you. For next year, we're coming in saying it's about $1.5 million, and EMS portion of that's $1.44 million. The first one is the inter-facility transports. We signed a new agreement with United Hospital and Alina. We believe that we're going to average one a day, and one a day equals $114,000 of revenue for the year. facility mileage radius increase, when we started doing the inter-facility transports, we were only doing Ramsey County. A couple years ago, we broadened that to a 20-mile radius, and that captured what we thought was a good portion of the assisted living and nursing homes that patients were being transported to. Recently, we're looking to make that radius 30 miles now so we can capture Hudson and some of the outer band areas. What we're seeing fiscal year this year, we've already done 1500 inter-facility transports. Last year, the entire year, we did 1400. Again, like our runs, our 911 calls going up 3% to 5% a year, we're seeing our air facility transports increase also. The good news is it's revenue coming into the general fund for the city to address the budget gaps that we have. The bad news is it does take our personnel and rigs out of service, and that's a domino effect onto ALS and fire coverage.

And Assistant Chief Melquist, I'm going to list this more as a follow-up. I'd love to see where these revenues are currently in 2026. I know we mentioned that some of them are higher than others, but it would be great to just get the actual, like we've had some presentations show the point in time, so I recognize it won't be the full fiscal year 26 because the actuals are still coming. But getting a glimpse of about as accurate as we can get of what they are currently would be really great.

Board Chair Johnson, thank you for that. Through the second quarter, we're at 120% of where we predicted we'd be. So we are above. I can get you those numbers in an email or I can set a meeting up with you and have that. One of the issues we have with EMS is with our EMS billing company, sometimes it takes three to six months to actually capture all the bills for that month. So that's why I say we won't know the full capacity, whether or not that's... Half a million, two and a half million, whatever that is above the 2.3 million. We won't know that until first or second quarter of 2027. But definitely, I'll get you the information through the first two quarters.

Okay, wonderful. Thank you. Yes, Chair Dose.

Thanks. I just had a quick question on that. When you say it's up 120% and the numbers you'll be giving us, are those transport fees that have been paid, or is that what we're anticipating collecting?

Those are transport fees that have been paid so far. So we're on pace to finish above the $2.3 million. Again, I say it was a conservative estimate, and we feel really good about where we're going to come in. We just don't know where that's going to be. Okay, thanks. Council Member Jost.

And I guess also just for the Office of Financial Services, it would be really great to know when we have an excess of EMS revenue that's coming in from what we proposed. It goes back to the general fund, but does it get budgeted for the 2027 year through the process? What happens with that additional revenue source?

Yeah, Chair Johnson, so for 2026, it does just go into the general fund. So it can help with other pressures that we may have. For 2027, it doesn't sort of carry forward in any way other than that if we were to have excess revenues overspending, that would contribute to the city's general fund fund balance. We have already reflected, I think, a little over a million, maybe one $1.5 million in additional EMS revenues for 2027 included in the proposed budget. So we'll be working with FIRE in the coming weeks to make sure that we are reflecting any additional revenue projections for 2027. Thank you, Ms. Mitchell.

Thank you, Chair Johnson. The next one is our mileage increase. We're going from $19 a mile to $40 a mile increase. It's our first increase in mileage in 16 years. It puts us in line with other agencies in the metro area and an increase of $430,000 of revenue annually. Our next one is a non-resident surcharge. Any patient that we have that's outside of St. Paul's ZIP Code sees a 20% increase in the EMS fee with a $100,000 revenue recapture Non-transport fees, BLS and ALS rates now will be charged for non-transports. St. Paul Fire has not charged for non-transports services rendered with no bill. We've always done it that way. We'll start charging for interventions such as EKGs, ALS medications, IVs, ALS assessments. For BLS, it'll be splinting, blood sugar, those types of runs where we have a patient who's in need and we minimize, assess, and monitor have the patient vitally stable, not needing to go to the hospital, they will still see a bill. It would be a lesser bill, but it would be a bill that they never had before. That will be $300,000 of revenue captured by switching to this policy. Extrication of patients, this one falls on the auto insurance, not on the medical insurance. So we get dispatched, and we have to auto extricate a patient out of a motor vehicle accident. Now that we get a bill, that will go back onto the insurance carrier, and that pays at 100%. That's $53,000. I'm sorry, $50,000. We also have a 12% increase in the baseline for all transports. So that is on top. This is what we did last year that we projected the 2.3 million. We're going to increase that by 12% for an increase of $270,000. BLS non-emergent transport rates, they were $650. They're now going to be changed to $1,500 moving forward, which is in line with M Health and North that have the same type of programs. $63,000 influx there. For all these increases, the formula is 80-20. 80% of our calls are billed to Medicare and Medicaid, and that is capped annually. 20% of our calls are billed to private insurance, and of that 20% that we bill, we capture approximately 65%, and that's where we come up with the numbers and try to come up with a conservative number on what we think we can increase revenue for the general fund. If you want to break down the fees further, it depends on each individual's health insurance, deductibles, whatever it may be. So if we get a call from a patient, it usually comes into myself, Chief Jezritz, or Jill here, and then we can explain kind of what they're looking at and why the number's what it is. The last revenue increaser we have is next week. I sent an email yesterday, but next week we have a ribbon cutting for a burn prop out at our training facility. It's the first time in 11 years that we'll be doing live, hands-on fire training, which is huge for our on-duty crews. It's huge for our academies, but it's also a revenue generator where we can rent out our facility, you know, a lot of... Combination departments and volunteer departments will do drills on Monday nights, Tuesday nights, Wednesday nights. They can come rent out our facility and do live burns and train their members at a cost, and that'll be a scene revenue of $125,000 annually for us. Next slide.

And we did get two questions as well from Council President Naker and then Council Member Kim.

Thanks, Madam Chair. I'm curious about the non-resident surcharge. How often do we serve non-residents and how does that surcharge compare to other departments?

That's a great question. You can either call up Chief Jesuits for that answer or I can get it for you later. What would you like?

If we can get it now, it's always better.

Chief Jesuits, you can come up and Non-residents are charged.

Yep. So as Chief Malkus said, it's basically just looking at zip codes outside of the city of St. Paul. So anybody comes into the city, we provide them services. They'll receive this number. It is not a high number. I think off the top of my head, Don't quote me on this. I want to say maybe 7,200-ish runs of that nature that did not fall with city zip codes. So it's in the big scheme of things for how many runs we actually do. It is not that many.

And do we know how that compares to other departments? I think it's big picture important for us to be in line. We increased our transport fees to be in line with other departments. We were well below before. It seems like when we're talking about raising taxes on our residents, but we're serving non-residents, it would be really important for us to at least be in line with the way other departments handle that.

Yeah. And this was part of the increase, I believe, that took place last fall. And so that was in part of the 2.2, right? 2.3. 2.3. And at that time, it was just proposed to do a 20% flat increase. We did not compare with other departments.

Can you follow up on the comparison with other departments?

Yes.

Thank you. Council Member Kim.

I actually have a brief follow-up question on that. Is that just when we're responding to calls that are outside our zip code, or does that include any of the mutual aid contracts that we have in place where we're maybe then transporting someone that's a non-resident from a mutual aid assistance?

Both, yes. It could be both, yes. It can be both, or it could be a visitor to the city that has a medical incident here in the city, whether it's at a state fair or a Minnesota wild game or at the science museum.

My question was around these fees that are creating new revenue. When I look at them, I'm wondering what unit would be doing the majority of this work? As an example, when I look at the inter-facility transports and the mileage radius being expanded, the non-transport fee and charge for non-transport accidents, non-emergent transport fees. In my mind, that's not an ALS, that's a BLS. But can you speak to a little bit like what unit then would typically be used for some of these kinds of runs? Like inter-facility ones and... A non-emergent transport fee. It sounds to me like this is BLS.

Thank you, Council Member Kim. Great point. If we go down the list, the inter-facility transports is BLS. The inter-facility mileage radius increase is BLS. The increased mileage rate from $19 to $40, that's both BLS and ALS. Non-resident surcharge, that could be both, but the majority of it should be ALS. Non-transport fee increase, that's a combination. Charge for non-transport motor vehicle accidents, that's going to be ALS. And a 12% increase is for all EMS transports, so that's both. Non-emergent transport fee, BLS.

That sounds good. I think it just speaks to your earlier point around, even just specifically the inter-facility transport, it's taking a unit, the offline. And so I just, yeah, seeing the impacts of maybe strain on one section of our EMS system maybe rather than another. So that was my curiosity. So I appreciate it.

Thank you for the statement and the support of Council Member Kim. It goes to show that I think after we have a new chief in place that we have a strategic plan and we come up with that three to five year and we incrementally add to attack those gaps in our service that we have and take the pressure off the firefighters and help with health and wellness.

So thank you.

All right, moving on. All right, revenue trends, changes, and outlook. We usually have to wait one year. We're going to talk about that. We usually have to wait one year to recoup all our EMS bills, first or second quarter of 2027. But at the 2026 halfway point, we're already at 120% of projected revenue, which I talked about earlier for one of the questions. I will get you the actual where we're sitting, Chair Johnson, on that year to date. But we are turning in the right direction. 59% was increased because we had not adjusted since 2010. 12% increase on top of that places us second in charges in the metro area. So we are right where I believe we need to be. I'll be blunt. We are not as high as HCMC, but I sincerely believe that St. Paul Fire provides the best EMS service to our residents in our city, in the state, and maybe even in the country. Pending opportunities, St. Paul Fire will always submit for grant assistance. Right now we're waiting on to hear back on the AFG grant, the SAFER grant, and the fire prevention grant. Next slide. History of budget to actual general fund. I think the important thing I want to point out here is the 2025 revenue was $21.9 million. $18 million of that came from EMS, the transports and some of the fees we're talking about. The other comes from the burn prop or renting out our training facility. It also comes from the contracts we have with Lauderdale, Falcon Heights, the Minnesota Wild, State Fair, University of Minnesota, 3M, the Whipple Building. Those are payers that we have contracts with that we provide either EMS or fire coverage for, and we get paid annually for that fire coverage, and that also goes to the general fund, and that makes up that difference there of about $3.5 million. Here is our budget summary of all of our funds. Thank you, Chair Johnson, for pointing this out to us in the pre-meeting. I really appreciate that. It was an oversight on my part, so I apologize. In the 100 is our general fund. As you look farther to the right there and see the change from 2026, you see a $3 million increase. That increase in the general fund comes from other current service level adjustments. Those are the three EMS chiefs. The CVA increase for employees, workers comp, utilities, and supplies. The 200 grant fund, that's AFG, HAZMAT, MART, and the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency. The 211, that's the opioid money that the fire department receives, and that money in there goes to pay the salary and benefits for the assistant chief of EMS. The 222, fire responsive services, that pays for equipment such as badges, training, non-emergent PLS transports, firefighter equipment, and paramedic reimbursement. The 722, that's PSG. I just want to point out PSG because it is at, I think, $4.2, $4.5 million. At PSG, we have 16 employees. 11 of them are mechanics. Six are on the fire side. Five are on the police side. So that's a PSG public safety garage that does services for all of our 911 response vehicles in the police department and fire department.

Assistant Chief, we did have a question from Councilmember Kim, so I'll go to her to see if she still has that question.

Okay. Moving on? Okay. Here's the big slide. Next one, please. Overtime for fire operations. In 2025, St. Paul Fire was budgeted $1.2 million and spent $3.7 million in overtime. In 2026, we were budgeted at $1.1 million and have spent $2.3 million so far, even with the F-shift. Our 2027 budget number is right around $750,000. My point is that the way we're staffed now and without hiring ourselves out of this, overtime is going to be a factor. A couple of things that come into play. The you know we work for a great state we work for a great city with that comes amazing benefits But those benefits you know the six month PTSD It's a great program and the state pays us back for any employee that goes into that program for the six months to get the help They need to come back to work healthy they pay for that what they don't pay for those that employee missing out of their spot and me having to backfill that with overtime so that 1.5 for that overtime for that six months and That number crawls up pretty quick. ESST has a great benefit. We were seeing a lot more use of ESST time in the fire department since it was implemented than before, and it has a domino effect on our deployment and our daily staffing. For comparison, I just want to point out that our overtime budget, actual budget of overtime in 2023 was $2.99 million, and 2024 was $3.09 million. We overspent by $94,000 in 2024, and now the last two, three years, that has come down from over $3 million to we're looking at $750,000 next year. So we are trying to be fiscally responsible. We are trying to think outside the box. We are trying to utilize the F-shift, but it's almost impossible to eliminate overtime for public safety.

Assistant Chief, we have two questions that have come up. Well, three technically, including mine. So I'll go with Councilmember Kim, back to Councilmember Kim, and then go to Council President Aker, and then I'll end with mine.

Thank you, Chair Johnson. I've got a question. Because earlier, there was a slide around attrition. And it's ongoing. You mentioned there was about 25 to 35 a year. I'm wondering then, even with recognition of the overtime and hearing that we have great benefits, but it's kind of putting a strain then on the number of people that we have in place, how How does it work to save that amount of money and attrition and still staff with at least four firefighters in a company? And then recognizing this, that you just mentioned that we have folks that are out utilizing benefits. How does all of that work then to make sure that we're fully staffed at each company?

Yeah, so, Council Member Kim, that's a great point, great question. So, for a firefighter, the savings comes from one firefighter's salary and benefits is approximately $130,000. Now, if you start talking about FEOs, captains, chiefs, that number grows. So, as they retire in 2027, we see that savings. But the domino effect is we still have to staff. We're still dealing with long-term sick and injured, light duty. So, yes, the savings stress that will put on the firefighters, we could see some impact. My hope is that in 2027, we get to whoever the chief of the department is, gets to come and present to the city council on our open FTEs and our overtime budget quarterly. I'm hoping that we can use that to kind of manage as we go, assess as we go, and kind of see if there is an opportunity, especially if revenue comes in higher next year as it did this year, or is this year. Is there an opportunity where we don't have to wait until January of 2028 to have a BLS Academy, to have a Firefighter Academy? But we'll have to assess that as we go quarter to quarter with the Mayor's Office and with the City Council.

And then a follow-up question on the overtime is, how much of this, this is just our overtime, or this includes wild games? This includes State Fair?

So that's a great point, Council Member Kim. So a few items I wanted to point out is that St. Paul Fire staff's multiple events for EMS Standby, assessments and transports, including the State Fair, Minnesota Wild, Minnesota Frost, St. Thomas University, Concordia, Harriet Island, the concerts, Twin Cities Marathon, Mung Freedom Festival, Fourth of July Fireworks, Grand Old Days, World Juniors, Breakaway Festival, Rondo Days, Street machine summer nationals back to the 50s weekend all races 5ks 10ks This Saturday we have five special events that we're staffing alone Those are all through contracts and they pay us for that, but we pay I pay out operations I pay for us to staff that with two to six to eight and then state fair could be 30 a day and We pay for that out of our budget, and then the contract goes back to the general fund. So we're being reimbursed as a city, but the fire department's not. So it's coming out of mind. We also have the state teams, the HAZMAT team, the Minnesota Task Force One, and the MART team, the helicopter team. And they, for their training and their deployments, that's another thing that we get reimbursed from the state. But we have to pay for that, for the overtime that comes out of our budget. And we estimate that we're paying, we're tracking it now, but we estimate we're paying $1 million a year. So last year it was $3.7 million. $1 million of that was for these special events and for the state teams. So now you look at it, it's $2.7 million. With the F-shift, could I be fiscally responsible and find a way to get that down to $2 million? I think we could. I look across the river at another fire department about the same size as us, and they are annually right around $2.5, $2.6 million. So if you take the special events that we staff off this, we lose the money that goes to the general fund, but we'd be on pace with other departments about our size for overtime spending. That's a huge factor that comes into play.

And I appreciate this because there's a wondering around, you know, this council had a lot of conversations around required staffing of police at events. And like if you're having a race or all these events, you want EMS to be there. And I'm not suggesting then that we put the cost on community members because that was the largest issue was that we saw a huge reduction in community applications that after a certain number of people required like a certain amount of money going to pay for a required number of police officers to be present. But it It just begs the question around like, the staffing of this department. And if this is a service that we are offering, and albeit we get paid back the money, but it goes into the general fund, but it doesn't help increase the staffing issue that's clearly happening in the police department, it makes me question then around how do we, or if we can, legislate around the kind of revenue that comes into the city, albeit that it's been through a reimbursement process that can directly go back into the fire department. I just, the more and more we're going through this presentation, the more I see a sort of like taking on both ends. And I'm seeing, I'm feeling very troubled by it, I think is where I'll end with that. So I appreciate that explanation a lot.

Thank you, Council Member Kim. I appreciate your support.

Council President Naker. Thanks, Madam Chair. I'm also a little bit confused because I think we've been talking a lot in this year's budget in general about the need to actually talk honestly about the cost of doing business. And in many other departments, I think that is accurately reflected. And I'm grateful for that. And we're not hiding any numbers. We're just being really open about how much it costs. And we're needing to grapple with that. What I'm hearing you say is that this year's budget put $700,000 in overtime, which is just completely unrealistic. spent far more than that every other time. And then also that we're not planning to have an academy this year. So we are continuing to get ourselves deeper into the hole that we've been talking about. And I hear you saying we may be able to bring one back depending on spending, but it really concerns me to not have that built in from the beginning. So can you speak to the strategy and rationale behind setting overtime so artificially low that we know we're going to blow past it, and then also not having an academy to help us remedy that problem.

All right, Council President Aker, thank you for the question. As far as setting the number of 750, like how we got there or what the rationale behind that, Jill, do you have any?

I believe we took some of the money that was budgeted for overtime and moved it into the salary for the three EMS coordinators so that we could support the EMS supervisors positions.

And then for the next year, we've been presented with an issue. Honestly, it's a band-aid that we're putting on to try to get through 2027 with the huge budget gap. Knowing that we're kind of constricted, we have barriers on where we could cut, what we can do. I think we're doing a good job trying to find ways to make this work. I'm confident that the revenue is going to come in higher, and I'm hoping that we can work with Leadership in the city and the City Council to not have to wait till July because it is going to put a overtime will go up And if it the only way it doesn't is is you have effect on staffing we have effect on staffing You guys start worrying about the iso rating and then you got to worry about the most important thing and most important People we have is the firefighters. We need to take care of the firefighters so showing up at a fire with three on a rig to do the job that four per NFPA and sometimes five or six per NFPA, it's vital and it could be life and death.

It just seems like some cuts just to meet a budget target do not make sense because in the long term and even in the short term, we're talking about next year already, we're going to see increased costs because we're not taking care of things like keeping our hiring pipeline going. So I I don't think we're in disagreement on that. I'm just articulating a frustration because we're talking about systemic issues, we're talking about being real about a budget, and then I see that not happening in this budget.

Well, and thank you, Council President Aker. One of the things that's another domino effect is when you're working short, and we're going to start tracking this also, is that when more injuries happen. And you're going to hear me talking a little bit here about our long-term sick and injured, but we're averaging 40 to 50 people a month are long-term sick and injured. Think about that, the A-shift running at 100 and even 16 overtime. If I got 40 of the 50 back to work and 15 of them were A-shifters, I'd have one overtime spot. So there's a multitude of issues that we're dealing with and trying to manage the best we can while making sure that we're taking care of our firefighters.

Assistant Chief, I want to make sure we get through them. I actually think my question may go over to the folks that are on injury reserve or who are out. So I will just let you continue for it, I guess, because I think that that's something that I also have questions about, of how that's captured and what when you have folks that are out for very valid reasons as well, but how much of an impact that it realistically has on the numbers and the budget and all of those things. Are you going to get to that in a future slide?

Pardon me?

Will you be speaking to that in a future slide?

I am going to speak to that, but Chair Johnson, that is a great point. It has a huge impact in our daily staffing and our overtime budget.

I just think that it would be really helpful to note one thing that I agree with my colleagues and some of the comments that have been made, at least as it relates to the fire and the police department, I will note that the police department is still asking for their academies. I'm curious about the fire department's decision not to ask for yours, being that I think one of the state distinctions between the police recruitment efforts is the direct tie within the fire departments, like direct staffing within the St. Paul fire department and folks actually going in to fill your vacancies. which differs from the police department's academy slightly in nature that they don't necessarily ensure that those folks go straight to the department afterwards. Could you just talk about like,

Why aren't you asking for your academies? We'll always take academies. We have an academy starting on October 5th of 32 people, men and women. Just to point out, out of the 32, eight are women. 25% is academy, the largest percent to ever come through an academy in St. Paul. Earlier this week, we were sitting at 29. Now we're at 30 for openings. The thought process wants to get us up above our authorized strength at the beginning of the year. and just try to get through the year and try to help out with this budget gap. We honestly, per the CBA language, we cannot lay off any firefighters unless we lay off BLS. BLS is just too important to... What we do, the runs we're seeing, the increase in runs, the CARES team, to lay off, we'd have to lay off the entire BLS division before you can lay off any firefighters. So when we're stuck with looking at, you know, hey, here's the task. come up with 3.3 million in cuts. There's just no other way we can look at doing it. So you got to look at, okay, it costs $35,000 per firefighter when they come through the academy. That's for gear, that's for the training, that's for a 16-week academy. And then the $130,000 annually for the salary and benefits. There was just no other option for us. So that's why I was hopeful or I am hopeful in 2027 that when we come and give our presentation that we'll be able to work with the mayor's office and kind of see what we're following, work with OFS to see if there is any additional revenue and if that's not spoken for, if we can interject that into the fire department to help us get through this year and then come up with a strategic plan that actually identifies what the FTEs are needed to function as a safe department.

Yeah, I sincerely hate to hear that, especially with the revenues coming in at a higher cost. I just don't understand the way that we're currently budgeting for fire and for police, this budget cycle. So that's not a reflection of your work or the work of the department. I just overall am very confused about how we're actually budgeting for public safety, it doesn't seem like we are taking into account the fact that in some departments, when you talk about police and you talk about fire, there's distinctive differences when it comes to just some of the pressures. But there are a lot of similarities. And I think one common theme that I'm seeing in this budget essentially setting ourselves up for overtime to continue to get worse, not better. And so that, to me, doesn't make much sense. And I think with the St. Paul Fire Department in particular, we're having revenue that's coming into the general fund that would solve whatever problem you're just speaking about, but it's not going to you all. It's going to the general fund. So that, to me, also, I have a lot of questions about. So I'll just note that for this group, as I see head nods, because...

That's what I'm hearing when I'm talking to my colleagues. So thank you, Assistant Chief.

Thank you.

Thank you, Chair Johnson.

Just a quick time check, Tyra. Where are we at?

11.

OK. We'll go to Councilmember Yang. I saw your hand first. And then you have about four slides that I'll have you just briefly go through. And then we'll go circle back to folks for their questions. It's towards the end, if that's fine.

OK. Thank you, Chair Bowie. Thanks, Chair Johnson. I echo everything that you shared. And one of the things I wanted to do is go back to Councilmember Kim's question, basically about daily staffing. My understanding is that you do need at least four firefighters in order for it to be safe. for that run, and so it seemed a bit blurry in terms of the response that you gave earlier. Would you be able to clarify, are you confident that with the proposed budget in front of us, given the savings and attrition, the work of the CARES team being spread to BLS team members, and many more that you listed too, that are you confident that there would be at least four firefighters on a daily run?

Well, so four is our goal. I look at our staffing, say, for our fire staffing is 116 daily, and we hire back to 116 with our pre-order. But with ESST, I mean, you can see what overtime is just with the pre-order, with the things we're dealing with, with the special events, and then with the long-term sick and injured and the vacations, which we've reduced the vacation flexibility. We hire back to 116 the day of when firefighters, the men and women of the fire department, they call off ESST or sick the day of. I do not fill those. So we go back and look at 2025. Our actual staffing was 110.9. That was our average for the year. And that's the number we use for our ISO rating. I feel that number is pretty good. Can it be better? Yes. I remember it was Councilmember Kim or someone talked about back, you know, four, five, six years ago, we were authorized to hire 5% over our authorized FTEs, and that's our best staffing number. We're at 113.9, and our overtime was the lowest in that year. That was 2019, 2020. So that's the way to get there. This year, there'll be pressure. There'll be pressure to make it work. There'll be pressure on the increase in runs, pressure on overtime. But like I said, we're starting the year in a good spot. We're starting the year where hopefully we're right at where we should be with our authorized strength, with 32 women and men coming on the job at the end of January. And we'll just have to see quarter by quarter how we go. And then instead of waiting and looking at it one time a year and getting up here and presenting and working with the mayor's office, on how to fix it i think it comes down to a tracking uh issue like chair johnson talked about um and we do a better job tracking and i'm looking forward to the quarterly presentations to kind of see where we're at what's working what's not and let's make changes on the fly let's not wait till january 1st of 2028 to make the change let's make it while we're going through the year to try to improve you know the the job the staffing and minimize overtime thank you chief knuckles i just have a couple of more things to add

I appreciate the transparency around those pressure points regarding staffing. I do agree, we can do better, and I want us to do better. I am walking away from this presentation with, I'd say, more questions and concerns that come from a place of optimism. You mentioned the goals, and I just want to name that for me personally, when it comes to the goals for 2027, I want to challenge us that even the goal to maintain response times What I would love to see is for us to shorten our response times. I recognize and agree we've been having a demand increase in service and in my ward with more families moving into the Heights throughout the year, which is really exciting. I get really concerned about how we will be able to meet these sort of goals, especially when we're not increasing the capacity at all in terms of firefighter positions for our city. And so what I wanted to share is basically my desires for the fire department, which is for us to be adding on more firefighter positions and to make sure that we are meeting that safety level of having four firefighters on those daily runs and at the same time you know making sure that for a department like this where we are bringing in revenue for very important life-saving work um and this is not to say like you know we're we're about we're profit different i i want to make sure that these sort of investments do come back to our fire department and so This is just to say I'm walking away with like a lot of questions and concerns that I would really love to have more one-on-one time with you and like other folks from our department too to figure out how we can create more long-term sustainable wins for our fire department because with the track that we're going down or the route we're going down here, I just think that we are getting further away from that and I want us to switch that around.

Well, thank you, Council Member Yang. I appreciate those words. I will tell you that those same concerns that you have, those have been talked about with Local 21 leadership and fire administration, and it is investing, and it comes down to independently staffing our EMS and our fire. That will drastically improve our response times. It will drastically improve the job, and that comes out of a strategic plan and leadership for the next chief on how we get there, whether that takes three years and we incrementally add, or five years, whatever that looks like, I can tell you that there will be a partnership and collaboration with Local 21, and we'll come up with a plan that the mayor's office can support and the city council can support, and we'll do exactly what you just talked about. So I appreciate you stating that.

Well, and then one last question. In the original proposal budget to the proposal to the mayor, was there an ask for more firefighters? And if yes, how many?

We always ask for firefighters. 14 firefighters would be at the expense of $1.2 million, but that would allow us to put another super medic in play. So let me just be transparent and honest about that. We've asked for 14 firefighters in eight of the last nine budget cycles. And in that timeline, we've gotten nine FTE firefighters total.

Thank you.

Thank you, Assistant Chief. With the five minutes that we have left, I'll ask for you to go through the rest of your slides. I'll just simply make note that every year that I've been on the council, the council has added back in firefighters for you all, whether they've been hired or not. Now, that was the conversation. And so one of the things that I will share in the budget for it is that, like, When we're talking about adding back that capacity, I'm going to be looking for a strong commitment from the next chief as well to actually hire those as they're intended. So proceed with the rest of your slides.

Thank you, Chair Johnson, and thank you for investing in us last year. I appreciate that. FTE summary, we have the general fund, that's where the minus two, we lose five, and then we are adding the three EMS chiefs in. Public safety aid, four from public safety aid fund, three EMS chiefs and one EMT. That was what we paid for the EMS chiefs out of. That ended this year. You're going to see on the slide coming up here that there was a little bit of money left over, and we're using that to offset through the rest of the year for the EMS chiefs. chiefs or coordinators chiefs the 100 fund is for cares and harold plus the addition of the three chiefs is minus two opioids uh ems assistant chief uh the 222 uh fire responsive services that's one ems coordinator it was put in there years ago we're not exactly sure why but that that uh salary infringes comes out of that fund. The 722 is the equipment PSG. That's 11 mechanics, six on the fire side, five on the police side, three office staff, and two logistics for 16 total. Our FTEs, unfilled positions. The fire chief, the job's posted now, closes on September 30th. Hope to have a new chief by the end of the year. Our health and wellness coordinator has been open since November 3rd, 2025. We're filling it with out of title presently. We're waiting for a new chief to get in so they can make that selection. Fire captain, we have three vacancies. Next test coming up in the first quarter of 2027. FEO, fire equipment operator, 11 vacancies. Next test coming up in the second quarter of 2027. And the firefighter has 16 vacancies. Altogether, we have 30 openings right now, and the class starts on October 5th with 32. Building maintenance positions, the repair, that's been posted. We'll be filling that in the next month. Next slide. ARPA funding, EMS supervisor, we spent that, and the fire recruitment and PPE, that has been spent also 100%, and that was recruits cost for training gear, turnouts, and helmets. Public safety aid, this is the EMS supervisors in the paramedic school, workout equipment and SCBAs. The $18,267 you see underneath the paramedic school, that was, we estimated to be at $15,000. It came in less than that per student. We plan to use that for the crisis intervention training, which if you go back to the beginning of my presentation, that's to get 18 more BLS employees trained. for CARES response. So the process there is to get all the BLS employees trained up for the behavioral health incidents we respond to, the unsheltered incidents we respond to, and try to think outside the box how we can still provide that great care. The EMS supervisor balance of $152,000 will be utilized for CAR 50 salaries for the remainder of 2026. Vehicle replacement, I just wanna show you this. Vehicle replacements, 1.6 million with an annual increase of 3.5%. I just wanted to point out that the cost of fire engines, fire ladders, and medic rigs has doubled since 2020. I could buy a medic rig for 200,000 and an engine for 400,000 back in 2020. I just got two bids this morning from two different manufacturers for fire engines, and both of them are just under one million. Another one that I hear is coming in later this week is at $1.2 million, from $400,000 to $1 million for a fire engine. Medic rigs are $500,000 for a new one. We have been doing remounted ones and trying to be, again, fiscally responsible with the money we have in this budget. But it's just, it's really tough to keep up with, to give us, to give the firefighters the tools they need to go out and do a job successfully. 2027, the 1.6 million, our vehicle obligations, we have the matching funds for a new Marine One, which we partnership with police, of 51,000. We have our second electric vehicle, which we got the grant for 1.35 million, but we still owe the difference of that, so $221,000. And we have a remounted ambulance we already sent that we'll get back in January and we'll pay for it then of the $371,000. That leaves me with $956,000. I still need an ambulance and an engine. The good news is the engine, it'll take two years to build. So if it's $900,000, we'll pay $450,000 next year and $450,000 the year after. And that frees up enough money where I can buy a second medic rig that we need for EMS. We have made it to the questions and discussion. Before we jump in there, I just want to point out, in the appendix, we do have a peak incident graph, a ward map with fire stations in each ward. And I apologize, Councilmember Kim, there's no fire stations in your ward. A listing of all the equipment and number of firefighters at each station in each ward. I know we've done the one-on-ones and one of the distinguished council members that asked for, like, how many firefighters are there? What's in my ward? So I have a list of that in the appendix. Then a heat map for responses. And you'll see they're different colors. I divide that up per ward. So you can kind of take a look at your ward and see where the hot spots are in your ward. And don't worry, yours, Council President Naker, is downtown. A response time comparison, and then an org chart for our department, and more information on each and every one of our funds. So I'm always willing to answer questions or meet after the presentation in the coming weeks if you have more questions or want to discuss the 2027 budget or the St. Paul Fire Department. Thank you.

Thank you, Assistant Chief. And Ms. Lacasse, is it Lacasse? Lacasse. Lacasse, okay. Nice to be able to see you as well. And then thank you for making the time to actually come out to talk about the budget. I think there will be a lot of questions for you as a follow-up, and so we'll be sitting around just to follow up people that will come from the mood, especially for questions that we didn't get to ask on the record. Thank you to the St. Paul Fire Department for being here today and just making the time to come out for your budget presentation. It's always great to see folks that take the time for something that's so important to us. And I know that's important to you because it's your work. And numbers don't necessarily do your work justice. But it's really important that we're able to fund the things that matter the most in our city. And public safety is something that I hear from my constituents all the time. including things that they may be willing to pay for over others. So I appreciate the time that you've taken. And with that, we are adjourned.