Public Safety - Regular Meeting

Good morning, everyone.

We're going to open up the Public Safety Committee for Tuesday, June 30th, 2026.

And we have a motion to approve the minutes. So moved. Dave, no, whoops. You got a second? John seconds. All in favor?

Aye.

Thank you. Okay, the district attorney here. Good morning.

Good morning.

Good morning.

So we are into our, well, we're finishing our second full month of the traffic program. It seems to be going well. You know, there's some learning curves that everybody's navigating, but I think we circulated the report that that gets circulated to everybody. So I just didn't know if there's any questions or concerns. I don't, what I think I'll do is I'll, each month we'll circulate that report, which is what we get. That way you'll know what's coming in to each town and or village. as a result of the program. That's separate, distinct what the courts do as well, so.

Do we have any questions on that? Anybody got their check?

Yes, that's the treasurer's office. They're good about that. They would rate it. They're right, I have not.

So then the next piece, really,

you know, over the years I've talked about what we see in volume and stuff, but I think in a vacuum numbers don't mean a whole lot. So if I could just have a few moments, you know, what we are seeing, we are seeing a slight increase in overall numbers, but I think what's more troubling is what we've been seeing over the last couple of years is a dramatic increase in the amount of violence. I think there's some things that that we as a county should be very concerned with. I don't know if you all have been made aware yet or not, but our state police and greenwich barracks has been closed. I think there were some building issues and then code got involved. It has been deemed uninhabitable for now. So we do not have a state police barracks in the southern part of the county. They provide a significant amount of coverage. They provide important backup. But, you know, consider overnight what our staffing levels are. The county is long and wide. And, you know, I just, I think it would be important for all of us, maybe the chairman can reach out to state police as well, and just make it a priority that they either find an alternate permanent location or take steps to address whatever problems exist. You know, I think some of the things I'm going to touch on here, you will see Response time, so what will happen? As I said to the major, the harm is going to be noticed but it's going to be too late when that happens. You know, think about those of us that have communities that have water and sewer, those pipes are invisible, so we ignore them. And then the problem becomes really expensive to fix when clay, vermiculite pipes break. And so I think the same thing will happen without the presence of the state police here to augment whatever sheriff does in terms of response time, backup coverage. I mean, how many times sheriff is the response The backup car may be a state police car to a domestic or to another assault. So I just think it's something we should all be very concerned with.

That's a good question. I heard there was a plan B. I heard the plan B could be Granville or New Brunswick. Is that something that is really true or is that just so totally thrown out there that you won't?

Well, right now we have a station in Granville, but if anyone has ever tried to get from the Granville barracks to White Creek to provide backup, that is a 45-minute, probably even with lights and sirens. So right now they've moved them to Scytheville. And the other thing that I said, and for those of us in the southern part of the county will appreciate this, the river and that hill does more than affect the weather. You would think that other than one week a year in Easton, you would think that You know, try to get from Schuylerville to Shushan as a backup response is just not going to be feasible long term. And I think it will have a great harmful effect to us. So, you know, like anything else, you know, they have to deal with a lot of the state police. I think if we don't. or I don't want to have that, I don't want to run that risk. And I don't want to be here five years from now with the same situation and wondering why, you know, these numbers continue to go up. So, yeah. I think it'd be great, you know, for those, for anyone who knows, you know, someone in command at the state police, just let them know that this is a major concern. I can get you some of the highlights that I've been emphasizing. I would also ask that we reach out to our state representatives. Um, they tend to have a different type of connection, um, to, to management decisions.

So the state of public basing here, why don't you make a motion to hear a very letter to.

That's going to move that chairman made a lot with the New York state police and also New York state representatives. Okay. We have a second on that. Jen, a second. Um, any other questions for Bob or. I think sounds good to do that too. Suggested.

Landlord ignoring the problems that have existed. And I guess I don't know enough about what happened to trigger the declaring it uninhabitable. It got to the point where, yeah, but I don't know the nature of the problems. You know, I know they've had issues with the with septic and I think the landlord just hasn't addressed that.

I think when we all saw it being built, we thought the state was doing it. State police and flight police and all kinds of stuff. I think everybody just kind of assumed it was a state project. It wasn't a building permit done for it. It was never a CO for the building. That's a problem. It turned out they were just leasing it.

I think there's some options available. I I keep picking on Easton, but there's a, there's a building in Easton that, you know, I think probably sits unoccupied on is a general fellows room. So I think there's some things that are available, but if there's municipal buildings, whatever we can do, but. Did you have a question? No, I was going to ask. So back to, but the numbers issues that I think that highlight the need for that presence, you know, one thing we have. A lot of ongoing fraud cases right now that are under investigation. Some of it, I think, are walk-ins where people ask, but I bet right now we have over 30 fraud investigations where the amount of money taken from Washington County residents is well in excess of a million dollars. And that just continues to go up. I know the Sheriff's Department deals with it. And those are just difficult cases, but demand manpower. But on our numbers from year to year, the first six months of this year versus last misdemeanors are up i think five that we've opened felonies are up 13. um but i think what i would like to do so that's 185 felony files have been opened this year but to give you a sense of what that looks like um we've had right now we have 153 open domestic violence cases um and just you know a couple of examples um of what is happening and why response time is so critical. Uh, we had a case not that long ago. It's still pending. Uh, we're a 48 year old male, uh, shoved his mother downstairs, punching her repeatedly in the face. When his sister tried to step in, um, he turned his attacks on her, um, putting out a cigarette on his, on her face. Ultimately the family got him to stop. The sister went into respiratory arrest twice on the way to the hospital. Um, And that's just one that came to mind to look up. So that is indicative of the type of things that our police are dealing with and that are happening. The other to kind of give you a range of age that doesn't seem to discriminate based on age. We have a 22-year-old male who was dating a 17-year-old. He must know the law because she became pregnant just after she turned 17. But when they fight and see two kids present, He was banging her head off the door. The yelling woke up the kids, grabbed the child, injured the child significantly. And then the extent of the abuse and violence was so significant that she was able to get into the bathroom to hide, couldn't call 911. One of the kids ended up calling the cops, but he was trying to break into the bathroom where she was hiding when the police arrived. And the hard part for our law enforcement is they know what they're walking into. You would never go to that alone. So if the sheriff's department has whatever many cars that are on at any given time in the overnight, they rely on the assistance of other agencies to provide police are busy and then lastly we have a 37 year old um similarly uh violent um threatening children with a gun um was choking the woman she was able to kick herself free um and that time he left this scene so just sort of a brief overview what we look at with domestic violence cases uh right now uh I won't get into the details with these, but we have 45 open sex cases that have been charged and are being prosecuted. One involves a youth under 18 with four victims. And again, kind of the age range, we have a 37-year-old that was a forcible rape that included a gun. And I guess more to what we're seeing on the violence right now, which is unusual for Washington County. We are prosecuting two open murder cases. Both will probably go to trial this fall. We've had murders over the years. I don't think we've ever had two open that you can think of. Very different types of cases. One was a strangulation. The other was with guns. type of violence, but we're seeing assaults. These are just felony assaults. Year to date, we've had 11 arrests compared to 16 for all of 2025. So one would assume that that is going to increase. The other troubling thing that we're seeing is, you know, I guess this is my 13th year. We had a couple of gang assaults. We've pretty regularly now over the last two or three years had at least two gang assaults on the street. Violence ranging in age where kids under 18 are involved to 35 year olds. It could be drug collection. It could be you spoke poorly about my girlfriend, but it is involved. Bats, iron pipes spills out on the streets and it's in our villages. So I think that's one of the things that we're seeing that is a great concern that I don't think ever really existed in Washington County before this. Firearms, we've had six violent felony arrests related to gun or with guns. That compares to 10 all of last year. And then I think the one that strikes, I think, closer to home, if you will, because a lot of times the violence we see is not the random violence that you find in all the so we can feel insulated from that, right? I don't know that people that would be doing that. Burglaries are not the same. And right now we've had 13 arrests for burglaries in 2026 compared to 20 for all of 2025. But those numbers are alarming and they're not just abandoned camps or hunting camps that are vacant. These are yours and my neighbor's homes that are being broken into.

And then

On the crime side, we have 211 open drug cases. You know, sort of that good news, bad news. The sheriff touched on previously that the incidence of deaths, fatalities from overdoses is down significantly. I think due in large part to his efforts of getting Narcan out there in the public, your support of that through public health has been significant. But what's replaced fentanyl and heroin is crack and meth. And if anyone remembers the 70s and 80s of the crack days, you know, crack is a real problem. So we continue to struggle with that. And then the last thing that we deal with of pretty significance are appeals. You know, we just had a great result on the Kevin Monaghan appeal. They could still seek leave to go to the Court of Appeals, but that brief was probably 50 pages just in terms of legal analysis. We have another case that's going up to the Court of Appeals on a marijuana case, issues related to search and seizure prior to the change in the law. That's going to the Court of Appeals. We had a kidnapping case. A lot of these things, I think, get lost if you weren't dealing with them. And we've had probably four or five kidnappings in Washington County in the last six, seven, eight years. And so we've had some good luck there. I've had a couple of ours since, so. I think all told, we did 15 appeals in the last probably eight, 10 months, and then probably 12 to 15, what are called 440 motions, which is people that have been convicted or pled on felonies are asking Judge McKeegan to let them out of whatever their deal was that they got. So, and all of that just takes time. So, you know, we're busy. I think it's just good to kind of get a sense of what it is that these numbers represent, what goes into it, so. Thank you for indulging me.

Thank you. Going back to the domestic violence. Yes. And from a personal point of view, you look at all the trauma that's been created through those DVs, and the kids are usually at the center of the scene. Yes. And they are going to carry that throughout their life.

And I think right now, I think we have four felonies that I can, off the top of my head, where kids were the ones who called 911. because either the mom was unwilling to or unable to. And in any event, you know, so yeah, you're definitely, that is a huge impact. And that spills into our social services, having to manage all of this. Yeah.

Thank you.

Well, if there's any questions.

Yeah. Are people going to prison more in Washington County?

Is that going up as the crime goes up? I mean, the way we approach them has always been, that hasn't changed. Um, so, um, I didn't look at, I could look at the numbers. I mean, I think they're, it's probably the same, you know, the number of felony arrests versus those that end up being prosecuted as felonies tends to be fairly consistent as a percentage, um, year to year. And so once that happens, depending on their, uh, their crime, their history, um, Many will get prison sentences. Many will get probation. We have a probation department, secondly, none. And really, our goal is we don't want the person to reoffend. And if they can succeed on our probation, there's very few people that graduate from our probation, meaning they fulfill the five years that reoffend. And I think that percentage, that success rate so that's you know so we we use we utilize them a lot but you know if they violate them and some people are just a prison sentence away any other questions well thank you i appreciate your senior support chair and attending get ready

Thank you. Good morning. Good morning. A few things. Of course, I have an addition. First thing is SRO contracts for Argyle and Hartford Central Schools. They've been signed by the schools, so we just need to recognize those.

I have a second. Any questions? All in favor?

Aye.

Is that an aye guess?

Pardon?

Is that a yes? Aye.

Thank you. The second thing is the Fort Edward and Whitehall Police Protection Services contracts have both been signed by the villages and have resolutions by the villages, so We just need to do our end of it and have I already signed it. We need the chairman to sign it.

Second. Any questions?

All in favor? Aye. There is a difference in the, sorry, I should have been more quick on that part. There is a little difference in the Fort Edward one. They asked for a decrease in the amount. I want to say it's like $60,000 maybe over the whole year, but it's $323,000, I believe. $322,000 for the patrol services for this company.

So, let's go back to the 67th.

It's a little bit less, in other words, than it was.

Yeah, so the $323,000 is reduction.

Yeah.

Okay.

Does that cover all your costs to take over those services?

No, it's not. When we do these contracts, we've had cases down there where we've had investigators there for two days. It's hard to do a dollar per hour kind of thing, but it does pay the salaries for at least or four, and it won't take effect until January. I did ask that, excuse me, that they keep the same rates in place for June through January, and they agreed to do that. But after January, that's when the decrease will come in. So, you know, they are right down the road. It's not as Whitehall, for instance, asked for less or wanted to pay less, then that would be difficult. But it's not a big call now. True up.

Sam has a question. Sheriff, so if they didn't have a village police department, we'd have to investigate those anyways. We'd get paid to investigate them. It's something we'd have to do anyways. It's a good deal.

And to be honest with you, if there's not a village police department in the county right now that isn't struggling with coverage, and especially at night, almost every single one, I think everyone has had nights when there's nobody working. So we're covering it anyways with no compensation. And that's what Well, hopefully they'll be able to fix that. I did talk with some of the state police staff over the weekend, and I want to have a meeting with the captain, certainly let the chairman know, and anyone else that wants to attend. What they're planning right now is they're going to stagger shifts and pretty much be able to maintain the same coverage throughout the day. I thought they would be able to use our sale office to do live scan to make an arrest and stuff. But of course, technology, they have different technology with their live scan that we do. So they can't fingerprint people there. So they'd have to bring it to Granville anyways. But that would have been too easy. You just share the Salem office. But I wasn't aware that they had a different. And you also said that The owner of the building in Greenwich may actually be attempting to repair the issues that got them out of there. So I will tell on that, but there is light at the end of the tunnel as far as possibly, but I don't know any other details for that. But as soon as I find out when they want to meet, I'll let everybody know.

Sure. Is there still a Greenwich heating facility? I know they're combined with Cambridge, but... Yeah, they have in the village...

That's not an option. No, it's about as big as this table, I think. They just have a very small room. Okay. Thank you.

Isn't the Cambridge office bigger?

Yeah, but it's still not big enough for Greenwich. Greenwich is bigger than Granville as far as the number of troopers and the number of BCI people that they have there. So it was a bigger station. Yeah, I said, you know, I was going to bring it up today as well, just to throw it out there to each of the town supervisors. If you do have some place you can think of that they could temporarily use, it wouldn't hurt. Because they are planning on using Scholarville. But like I said, they're also going to stagger their shifts, so It might not be too much difference during the day. They have, like us, they're very light overnight, especially, you know, in the three to six, three to seven time period.

Can I ask a question? If it's in Scatterville, would that go through our dispatch?

Yeah, I don't think anything would change. I mean, they go through ComSec, Discord, and all dispatch, and then you would still be able to, right? It doesn't matter how far.

They're just coming out of there and coming here, so it just increases the time for them to get here.

So the communications is... Thank you.

I can hear our dispatch, one of them, like our Ulster town, so it's... But not so much since St. Lawrence. Uh, the next thing I have is, um, this board of members, we had, uh, some money from Rob York's office, $175,000 over three years for, uh, a licensed social worker. And I have a proposal from Rebecca Vansky, uh, It's in lieu of a contract, so I was requesting a waiver for us to use the money that we received from Rob York's office in Warren to pay for this position that should work out of our office. And as the DEA pointed out, seeing more and more domestic violence type situations, more and more cases where crisis support could be used. But I know that crisis is excellent. But their services would be psychosocial assessments, resource coordination referrals, individual group therapeutic support services. Basically, the way that we are looking at this is that deputies to, again, to the vacation literally go from call to call to call and also more serious weapons involved I've never seen it like it is now just a general lack of any respect for the law or law enforcement but this in this case what it will allow us to do is when we have those domestic violence cases or those serious cases where someone needs services afterwards is be able to have Rebecca go back and meet with the victim. Whereas the deputy can't do that now because they're just going case to case. So this would be a huge thing for us. So maybe long story short, just requesting a waiver for a contract instead of a little contract to use that money that came from Rob York's office to pay for her services. It would be um the grant budgeting purpose planning monthly vouchers are not to exceed $3,700 a month so those are the hours we don't have like set hours you know we're going to try to plan this work it out to see what's best to utilize these services so we don't have a schedule to show you or the days that she's going to work or this or that or however. It's all to be determined based on what we find is helpful.

When would be an adventure, you know, possible start date? Tomorrow.

July 1st would be great. Tomorrow. What about liability insurance? Um, thank you, Julie.

So we have a motion to move forward.

Motion to move forward.

And do we have a second? Scott's second. Any discussion on this?

Sure. Sheriff, I would just encourage you to work with Daniel on personnel. Um, the IRS has gotten very, very geeky about contractor versus employee. So go over those guidelines with Danielle. They've gotten a little bit more strict about calling somebody a contractor. So there's some certain checkboxes that you want to make sure that you maintain for a contractor relationship. So I would just encourage you to go over those with Danielle. So that we don't accidentally... Any other questions?

This wouldn't be an employee of the county. There would just be, and is it kind of a per diem thing as needed?

Yes. And that's why I was saying, like, I'm not sure what, you know, without, we haven't done it yet. So I'm not sure what the best hours would be or what, how many days a week or whatever. But we have, we have a limited amount of money over a three-year period. And she put in her proposal that it won't exceed $3,700 a month. So we know that we can work with that number and figure out what days are best and hours and that kind of stuff.

Thank you. Yep. That $175 is for three years.

Correct.

We're going to know if we're getting another $175 or is this going to sunset over the end of three years?

When the money's done, this is done.

Okay.

Hopefully, you know, we'll be able to prove the worth of it and continue to give more.

Is that a one-year contract or three-year?

No. Or no contract? With her? No, it doesn't have a time period on it. It's just we know how much we have, you know, to spend. And she knows that, so.

Any other questions? All in favor?

Any nays?

Yes, we're going down there. Are you a yes?

Pardon?

Are you a yes?

Yeah, I said yes.

Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't hear you.

I don't need to.

Anyways, thank you.

Thank you.

And also, I had a request to...

bring up the building B security that we've been looking at. And I wasn't sure, Melissa's not here, so I think she was the one that asked me to put it on the agenda. But we have had meetings, Matt Jones, with Tim, Glenn, and looking at the downstairs in this building, the security set up. and going over what, how we can, how we might be able to approve that. So I guess without having any, we don't have any plans or anything, right, from adding, from building the grounds. So, let me just use this as an opportunity to let you know that that's what, that's what we're looking at and that we'll get back to you with some draft. We do have a fair amount of people come through, especially budget time. Last year it was difficult for safety purposes, security purposes, to have people coming through that entranceway. Right now, none of us think that that's a good setup the way it is, basically. Are we talking about

facility set up, or are we talking about main tower, or are we talking about both? Both.

Any other questions? I have a wonder question again. I mean, I have talked to Tim about it, and I talked to Scott about it, who are all supportive of looking further ahead. Is there like a grass break that lets an alarm system that would know let someone know that someone had entered the place, because the camera doesn't set off the alarm.

No. I think in that case, if you're talking about the case where, yeah, dispatcher was able to catch that one. But a lot of this stuff, like I said, approval.

Any other questions on that? Thank you for listening, Ted.

And I had one more sign on the agenda, and that is the Eden Center contract. I requested, as you know, they are, they pay, we pay them ahead of time for their services, and thank you for that, by the way. It's been working out well. The contract is up And I did request from them that they change it to a six-month contract so they can get back. They can get on the county's fiscal cycle instead of us being on theirs. So they did that for us, but I didn't get it in time to make it through the last audit. So I'd like to request it if possible. There could be a special audit that would be able to pay them prior to going through the process until, so they wouldn't get paid until July 17, basically, if we're not able to. There's no money difference in the contract itself. It's the same amount. So the only thing really that changes is the length of the contract. And it's till January, obviously, and then we'll negotiate if there is any changes in the next six months of the contract, we'll be able to this upper election.

So we would need to move that forward?

Finance first.

Finance.

Finance first. There are two things at play here. One's easy, one's not. So the extension of the contract for six months to get them on the calendar, that's the easy part. here factory respectfully has the ability to sign that contract anyway right so um the harder part is there is no mechanism for me to pay them early there's no out about it there's no early on it there's no there's nothing out of the audit cycle unfortunately for that vendor that there it's very specific what qualifies to be paid out of the out of the audit cycle so the best i can do for them is is the Monday after when we got the checks. July 17th. The Monday after the third Friday. There is no, unfortunately, there's nothing available to me to early date. I don't give a shot. Unless, I mean, you know, you all can call a special board meeting. You have that power, but that would be the only thing. There's nothing in our current rotation to allow. It would take a special board meeting to pass that audit.

Yeah, I wasn't sure. That's why I just thought I'd give it a try.

So regarding your motion, you don't need one because it is the sheriff can sign the contract.

It probably would depend on how the first one was authorized right then. If the board authorized the contract, then they would authorize the extension. I wonder if I saw it. Right.

We signed it over to you this week.

I haven't seen it yet. That was out last week.

There's only two. There's only myself and the owner to sign it. So we just sent it over for you. Like I said, nothing's changed but the dates for the length of the terms.

Does that lapse in pay jeopardize the contract?

pay, you know, not be prepaid. So. Well, sure.

You know, I was just trying to think about that. So this could possibly be switch it from prepaid to pay through audit, right? Am I saying that correctly? Well, going forward, we would just keep paying, but now we're paying after the service.

That does become, my understanding is that does become a burden on the vendor. So what we normally do is we would pay in July for June services. What we have agreed to do with this vendor is we'll pay in July for July services. Right. This vendor is of a size where it matters to make their payroll and stuff. So I think to keep this contract and this relationship intact, you wouldn't want to revoke that deal. It's not really prepaid, it's same-paid. They actually get paid for the month that they're serving, even though the month hasn't expired. If that makes any sense. But this one time, unfortunately, there's going to be a little belt tightening by the vendor because there's just no way to... We had this first in July and June, but the board meeting would have been outside.

Yeah.

So at this point, Dan, can you forward this to finance? so that you have time for review.

Yeah, that's what I hoped. Thank you. That's why I heard that.

And do we have a second on that? Question? All in favor?

Aye.

Thank you. Thank you. Take care. I think we tried that once. Good morning, everybody.

Just a couple quick updates.

Our Homeland Security Grant updates that we get every year.

We just got a notification last week, two weeks ago, on two of them.

Our statewide Homeland Security Grant Program, our SHSP grant, was awarded in the amount of $42,865, which just for your knowledge, that's federal funding. That was cut $25,000 from our last allocations. And that's collaborative between us and the Sheriff's Office. And our Emergency Management Performance Grant was awarded for $24,162, which was cut $2,400 from our last allocations. Those things typically fund special project items, fund like our drone mapping, replacements, in addition to community notification programs. Those kind of things are a host of things that those fund. So our applications are due next week for those. So we are working on those. We just want to let everybody know what those numbers are. We knew that there were funding cuts. They said last year they were going to be cut, and I think we're going to continue to see that, at least for a little while. This already does because...

So you're just at the application process at this point?

Application. These are the ones where we already get awarded it before you actually apply for it. And they come every year typically. So applications are due next week.

Are you looking for the budget at this point or no?

We have just the budget with the application. Our budget? You're looking to convert to go to finance? Not yet.

Okay.

Once we get everything submitted, we can move and recognize the funding. We have to finish everything so we know, but probably in our next committee meeting. We're working in just a note on the SHSP one. Typically that's specifically designated. Like you can't just use the money for whatever you want. There are specific categories you have to use. And they've prioritized a couple of things, security, election security, that are certain requirements of that. Some of them have to do with law enforcement. So we always work collaboratively with the sheriff's office to make sure that that could benefit both departments or for things that we both use at the same time to support the needs of the public. It is getting very small. Those are typically things that we have not had to use local funds to be able to pay for. And we're up against either stopping doing things that are supporting investigative support for either the fire service or law enforcement, things like film mapping, those kinds of things that save considerable amount of time. You know, we're, we're going to have to probably pay for that this year. In the past, we've been able to cover some of those grants. So it's definitely concerning for us. And it's not just us. I mean, everybody across the state was cut amounts. Ours was relatively small to some others to begin with. So the cut to us is a little bit bigger than the cut to some other places.

I mean, it's not only the cuts. It sounds like it was a change of views.

It changes all the time. So It has to align with the federal priorities, whatever they are. And that's always been, it's a good thing because then you just can't use the money for things that you don't, right, that don't apply to what it is. So it's specifically designated for a number of different areas. Like I said, election security is one, cybersecurity is another, and then supporting terrorism, suspicious activity reporting, those kind of things. So that's a number of different things on there.

Yeah, the district attorney brought up fraud and how much money is lost now through fraud. Is that cybersecurity?

No, cybersecurity would be more action of our own systems. Thank you. The next item that we had, I did have a couple add-ons if that's okay, but always. The next item was the fire investigation training program. I know that you all remember a year and a half ago, we brought on three new fire investigator trainees and To ultimately become a fire investigator, they have to get certified and trained to become a fire investigator. So right now they're basically out there providing onsite support. They're learning hands-on alongside the other fire investigators. The only current program in New York State that's run by the state is at the Fire Academy, which is three weeks long. And some of that's broken up. It's very difficult to get into the program. It's a great program, very hard to get into, and it's very hard to pull somebody out of their own work. as a full-time employee, travel and those kinds of things for three weeks. We've struggled like a lot of other places to get people in there. So we've had to look at ways in which we can get our fire investigators trained and brought up to stop with the international certification or state certification. So having an interesting problem, the brains of the Bureau of Fire got together and tried to look for a collaborative solution, which would allow us to be and maybe some other area investigation teams without having to do that in three weeks of leaving your own job, three weeks of travel, costs that are associated with all that. So we do have some instructors on staff that would be able to teach the IAAI, International Association of Arson Investigators, fundamentals of fire investigation sports, or the cost of the materials of the company that we go with, which is less than $1,500 for team people. which is a huge benefit of us, right? People don't have to travel. They don't have to go anywhere. They're coming here. We have instructors on staff that could teach that. And then obviously they still have to do their field training after that, after they've seen through the coursework, and they still have to apply for national certification, take certification tests, and then navigate whether or not they could be state certified, you know, retroactively or not, or alongside that. So we are going to, we just want to let you know, we do have enough money in the training budget to be able to do that, but that's an option that we're looking at very heavily. And if we can make all the pieces go, that's something we're going to move forward with to be able to start getting those folks certified so we can put some more hands in there. I mean, the fire, you all know, your fire departments are busier than they've been. We're seeing a more need, the sheriff and the district attorney talked about incidents being up, incidents are up. General, I couldn't give you a number, but I can tell you the frequency and the complexity of them are certainly much higher than they've ever been. We're seeing more complex incidents on an everyday basis. We're definitely seeing the frequency of incidents increase. You know, you see them on the news, you see them in your own community. It is reflective of everything that the public safety services in general, fire, EMS, law enforcement are experiencing. And we're all doing it with a shortage of people. I mean, your fire departments are counting people over the majority. There are a couple that are up, but the majority are counting. EMS agencies are struggling. And the entire public safety world is in a very fragile state. And that includes, obviously, right down to the 911 center, all the way up to the inline law enforcement, fire officer, and EMS agency.

So, yes, sir. You said that other agencies might send people to this course?

We may open it up if we have enough openings to other fire investigation agencies. Would we charge for that? So we wouldn't, if we charged anything, it would just be the cost of their books if they didn't purchase them on their own.

And if there's a strain on your training budget, I would remind the committee that we pulled back money from the fire training center. I think this would be an absolutely appropriate use of some of that money to fund the training. I think that's a very valid use of that. If this is going to be a burden on your training, I would tap in, I think it was $79,000 we pulled back. Last year we closed the capital project for the fire training center, and this might be a good use of some of that money if it was going to strain your training budget.

Certainly, the fire training budget is $5,000, so it will be order of that. I mean, we certainly would be open to using that money if the committee or the board would be open to that in the $1,500 to get a significant number of people through the coursework. There will be some costs associated with certification later on, and obviously they have to do field training, but these folks are all salaried folks. It's not like we pay them more if they're here sitting through training classes or anything else. The fact that we have a good important and supports the needs of our local fire departments that the majority don't have. Well, all of them don't have their own fire investigators. They may have one person who might be certified, but typically they're using the county team to identify our seniors and investigate that. So we'll definitely be open to that.

Should we put it on another thing to make that transfer now?

So you have two options if you want to support that idea. You can send it to Finance Now and fund the program up front, or have an understanding that later this year, Tim may come to you and say, that training line has run a little light. Remember when Al told you that we had some fire, so you can do it now, you can do it later, or you can do it not at all and say, make your $5,000 work. You have basically three options.

If we move it forward, it stays on the books.

If you move it to finance now, you don't get the selective amnesia that comes at budget time sometimes.

Did you do it in a caveat in the motion?

Why don't we see what the costs are going to be before we move money back? You're guessing what it is. I have no problem doing it. I just want to make sure we know that the We have the money ready to go when we need it. We don't have to go back and redo it again.

I would suggest that you can compile all the fees that are going to be. Fund at once. Yeah, fund at once.

Maybe there's some other training events that come up that maybe need some funding too that you might want to consider looking at.

Right.

Could you bring that to finances?

Sure. or you can come back to your July meeting here, whatever you're comfortable with.

Plan is next week. That's a short period of time to get information together.

That was my question. When did he actually need it?

So we're not planning to do the course, I think, until September. We're shooting for after Labor Day.

So maybe you come back to the public safety July meeting with a request.

Thank you.

All right.

My next item, if you look so often to talk about is the nice long amount that everybody probably got. I did bring it out in case someone doesn't have it. Pass it out if you don't really want to. It's the county EMS plan framework. Yes, you want to pass it out. No, you don't. I got a good copy. Well, lucky for you, I have plenty. So you can take two if you'd like. I'm sure you have it, but This was the new initiative announced legislation that every county is going to be required to write their own county EMS system plan. So what the state did with this, the legislation passed, they put together the framework, they released the framework, which I attached and sent to you all. Thursday night last week. So in an effort to make sure we all know the timeline on this is very short. It's due by December 19th to the state. Luckily, we have been working collaboratively as a county for the last four, almost five years on some type of county EMS project. So we have some of that. Unfortunately, that still takes a lot of work to be able to get all of this together. And it's going to take a lot of work, not only from us, it's going and that's every county village that's going to rely on data collection from all the EMS agencies. And some of that data is simple. The municipal data is pretty simple. Some of the EMS agency data, and I put that all in the email too so everybody would understand exactly what they're looking for, right? Once the data collection points are released and it's identified where they're going to come from, whether we have to collect it or the state's going to collect it and then put it back, then in turn we have to put that framework together and plan it. So just like every one of our other plans, it'll be brought for adoption later this year, prior to, and then we'll have to submit it afterwards. So I would expect that over the next couple of months, not only will you hear from us or you'll hear from the state relative to the data collection items, you'll hear from us relative to being able to get that group of people together so we can start getting this framework together. EMS coordinators have been working diligently on this for a while, knowing, some of what was going to be in the framework, but until we actually saw it the other day, nobody really had an idea of that.

I just have a question. When we gather this information for the situation I have for you, are we going to be able to filter that to separate the ambulance service from what's actually the EMS service? I'm concerned about that because that's going to take a whole different picture because most of your vehicles are dedicated to transporting Are they providing even a service?

You mean the non-emergency transport? Yes, we'll be able to filter what are actually dispatch calls versus their transports. And they're responsible, as you saw in there, the agencies are responsible for turning in their own call data as well. So obviously all the agencies will have to turn that in, but we can filter that for you on the town level.

The agencies receive this?

So the agencies received an identical copy of what people have received. We're trying, just like we have throughout the beginning of the work group program, we're being completely transparent with the MS agencies and municipal leaders. It's the same message across the board. This is not something that we're asking to do. This is something that the county has been tasked to do by the state of New York that we have to have our county in a system.

That is the comment that a good part about this situation started its process years ago. you had a vision and foresight to go ahead and say, hey, this is coming down the road, we need to know when.

Yeah, I mean, certainly, you know, honestly, New York is in a tough place in a lot of areas. EMS in Washington County is in a tough place. It's only survived as long as it has because of the dedicated EMS agencies that are out there. Without them, we would be in much dire, or much worse straits that are much worse situation than we are now.

Now, obviously,

You all know that the county medic, the gap coverage are both very busy as of late and activity is up. ALS, there's a shortage of that across the county, but the agencies, you know, are working hard to cover what they can cover in their own community. Falls up and people down, that's a struggle.

Is the, I want to see, is counties in the surrounding area in the same trouble as we're in, that some counties are run by the county itself, their EMS, correct?

So if you're talking bordering counties, yes and no. Saratoga is, I mean, their system is similar to ours. They don't have any county support other than the EMS coordinators right now. They don't have like county-wide ALS or gas coverage like that. Rensselaer doesn't. Rensselaer actually contracted with a couple of other communities to provide programs, or a couple of community agencies to provide programs. Essex does. Essex has a countywide program that supports the existing infrastructure. I'd say Essex is probably as close to this setup that we have, being our towns are all super spread apart. EMS districts, if you look, and we have 17 towns, we only have eight EMS districts in county, or eight EMS agencies in county. So eight in-county MS agencies covering 17 towns. Now we do have a couple of outside support, Boonesbury providing for Pilot Knob or Ticonderoga providing for Putnam. But when you look for an ambulance, the ambulance that sits in Whitehall covers Dresden, Whitehall, Hampton. That's a big stretch when you look at the ambulance sitting in the middle of that. I mean, getting an ambulance from the village of Whitehall to the far end of Dresden or into Hewlett's Landing. And then if that ambulance in Whitehall is not available, The next closest ambulance is coming from Fort Ann, Granville, back down the road. So, right, but it becomes a bigger concern when the area is so far spread out and the resources are so thin. I mean, it's tough because every county is a little bit different. We don't have, you know, certainly you all know, we don't have the business support. We don't have the tax base that Rancher County has or Saratoga County have businesses and those kind of things. And volunteerism, some of these agencies still rely on a lot of volunteers. And certain agencies in some of those counties, they don't have any. It's all aid. So here it's typically a mix of both. You know, ALS continues to be a scarce resource here. So you might be able to get a BLS ambulance off the floor, which is an absolutely amazing thing without BLS. You don't have any ALS. So getting an ambulance out the door is important. But being able to provide advanced level care is critical. So I think everybody's doing what they can do with the resources they have. And this certainly will be able to shore that up or at least help us put it on paper for the long term.

And it's interesting because we listened to the DA and he talked about the increases. Usually those increases, a lot of times, will go back to the EMS agents and their attendants because there's usually a and they're getting more and more intense. You know, Salem's has a ton of by almost a third at the current rate. And I'm sure every other town is the same way.

Transport times are long. I mean, take an ambulance from Granville and send it to Albany. I mean, that ambulance is out of service for probably three hours at least. And that's considering you get into the hospital and get turned around relatively quickly to be able to get back. So yeah, I mean, you know, our wait times are up and a lot of this is, which the ambulance is waiting there too. When they get there, you know, It's not like the old days where the ambulance walked in the door and you dropped the patient off and left. You sometimes are stuck there waiting a bit until you get to meet with the nurse and fully turn the patient over. But I think it's important to remember that we're really lucky to have the agencies that we do that are putting in the work that they have for the community. Up to this point, most of it do it with very little funding.

All right. Anything else? Any questions?

I just have two more quick things. One, just weather related. Sorry to be negative, but you all know that the next three days for everybody, it's going to be a tough three days. I just wanted to get this out. Schooling centers went out this morning. Those are all community partnerships that we're lucky to have with those community organizations. This isn't anything that you probably all haven't already read. But just know that the cooling centers are open. Some of them are not open on Friday due to the holiday, but there are a number that are. In addition to, we do have a couple of big events coming up in the next few weeks. So the Independence Day fireworks at the fairgrounds on Thursday, which we'll see a number of county and local resources for EMS there. Estimated attendance is about 10,000 people. That's a busy day down there. It's a busy night. It's typically a great time. This year it's going to be 100 degrees, so We'll have plenty of folks on hand to be able to navigate whatever happens in coordination with the local EMS. Our support there in the sheriff's office, obviously we'll have a good presence down there. But we just ask everybody to please be mindful of the heat the next few days if you do know of someone in your community who's in need of some place for cooling and you can't arrange something or arrange something locally, please reach out to us and we'll do the best we can to help with that. We do expect there to be an increase in heat-related illnesses at this time of the year. It's going to be hot, it's going to be humid, and it can be very serious. So keep an eye on your neighbors.

Are there some extra requirements to... Like if I wanted to add my town hall to this list?

Nope. As long as you have a place that's cool, that has air conditioning, you don't have to provide food, water, or anything like that. It's just a place to be able to cool off for people that don't have access to air conditioning, typically at the hottest points of the day. It's not like a shelter or anything like that. Thank you. Yep.

Any other questions?

Yeah, we're not going to add anything. If you just email me whatever you want to add, we'll add it. And the reason why I didn't publicize the graphic with what the global standards are, and I publicized the links because it's super easy to update. The last thing, and I just sent this out prior to this, I didn't Just got off the phone with the Fort Ann Village Mayor this morning. There is some significant road work that's coming out on State Route 149 in Fort Ann. It's going to start on the 12th of July, which will close the section from just before the county barn if you're coming from Warren County, and then a little bit after, kind of around the Dollar General area towards the village. And that will be completely closed through traffic. Local residents will be able to get up to the closure point, which will be just west of the county highway barn, but it's going to rely on a number of different side roads to detour. That's a very heavy traffic area. Anybody who's ever sat traffic there on Friday afternoon knows that coming either way through the village beforehand is tough. That's going to make traffic pretty tough for the next or for that two-week stretch there. They will be doing some damage system work also that the village is working on coordinating with us to put out some notifications. The traffic will be the biggest impact that we see. It's certainly going to affect through traffic. It's going to affect everything.

It's going to take all the traffic trailers from New England down to 149. It's going to take them from the road to Rumenar before Rumenar by Kingsbury and before that way and up.

Is that something that they can do on GPS so track trailers coming through would be rerouted?

So they'll put that, so DOT will put that into 511, which will reroute anybody who's got live GPS. Some of the folks that have like the downloaded Tom Toms or anything like that, the old school stuff that doesn't have live GPS, it won't update without the ability to have that. But the state, I mean, the state's been very communicative with us. They've sent us all the information on that. I'm sure they're going to have, they already do have some variable message signs out there, but I would expect you're going to see publicized it this morning on our social media stuff. We'll put out some additional alerts leading up to that as well, at least for local traffic. The biggest impact is going to be people not familiar with the area, trying to navigate the sidewalks.

We actually, last board meeting, we six roads and we actually closed to actual vehicles. So they didn't take our town roads in record. We processed the train to find their ways around Detroit. So these are all going to be going in a different direction with us.

And last but not least, we were happy last week, two weeks ago, to welcome two of our communications training officers off training to give us very much needed support. Things are very busy in there. It's nice to have two new folks. Both of them are doing very well. And really their success is in thanks to, one, their own dedication, but really their training staff and the amount of time that our folks working on duty staff, but into their training and helping them learn their job, helping them be able to perform the tasks. So I couldn't say enough how lucky we are to get two out of training that are able to support the needs. Now we go right back into, we are still short. We're still in the process of navigating, hiring a couple more per diems and getting some more people through training. We are still in indefinite need of the additional positions that we talked about last year. Everybody's busier. But yes, our staff are doing a great job. You know, obviously last week, but to the maximum, you take 87 storm-related calls in a very short period of time. Now that's H7 911 calls that are coming in that you have no idea what they are until you answer or process them. And it happens within Just like that, I can't even tell you. On top of the 87 storm-related calls, we had a number of local regular emergencies, domestics, traffic stops, anything that you can think of. That doesn't stop during a storm. And then the needs, obviously, afterwards, power outages, those kind of things. So we are very appreciative of what all of our crews do inside the 911 Center. Our first responder partners out there, it's really a community effort to make sure that everything goes and the people in the community get what they need. When you think about it on the large scale, from the Sheriff's Department, the state police, the local PDs, your fire agencies, EMS agencies, the 911 Center, the medics, it's a huge working environment that the need from the public has just continued to rise. When we hear more violence, more everything else, you know, the public needs more of those things all the time than we have ever seen in the past. So thank you very much for your time.

So back to the desks, they're all good? Everybody's sitting at a desk?

The desks are getting replaced next week. Okay, let's check them. Yep, those folks, we talked to the company, they'll actually be here at 7 or 8. So that requires, obviously, there's a lot of infrastructure there that requires coordination with IT, our radio, all systems out there, and our staff. But yes, we are happy that they will be fixed and back in service.

Thank you. Thank you very much for all that everybody does. You know what you want. Maybe some calls.

I will make sure.

Because the noise would drive me crazy.

I will make sure that I read that.

Yes, I will say that.

Hopefully, we know what somebody's saying exactly tomorrow.

We're ready, but we're not going to bring it up.

Ready as we'll ever be. Thank you all.

Thank you. Any other business to come before the board? If not, very good. Thank you very much.