[This transcript was generated automatically from audio using AI and hasn't been reviewed by a person -- it can contain mistakes, including plausible-sounding sentences that were never actually said. Treat it as a starting point, not a verbatim record.]

[0:14] Good evening. Welcome to tonight's town talk. My name is Jennifer Benarat and I serve as the city's communications director.
[0:22] I'm filling in tonight for city manager Scott Neal, who is out ill. This year, the city has planned a number of town talks on topics important to our residents.
[0:32] Tonight's is on our fire department operations. Fire Chief Andrew Slamo will speak about his department's work and he'll provide updates on staffing and construction of Fire Station 2.
[0:43] He'll also talk about the outlook for a new Fire Station 3.
[0:48] Andrew will speak for about 30 minutes.
[0:50] After his presentation, he will stand for questions.
[0:54] We will end tonight's town talk at 8 p.m. or when we run out of questions, whichever
[0:59] is first.
[1:00] However, the discussion will continue online at bettertogetheredina.org for one week.
[1:06] That discussion will close on Tuesday, June 11th.
[1:09] Now, I would formally like to introduce my friend and colleague, Fire Chief Andrew Slamma,
[1:15] who's been our Chief since the summer of 2021.
[1:19] However, Andrew has been a member of the Minnesota Fire Service since 2004,
[1:24] working as a paramedic firefighter in Edina, Savage, Mankato,
[1:29] and on the Midwockerton Reservation in Pryor Lake.
[1:32] He ascended through the ranks over his career,
[1:34] serving as captain, deputy chief, fire marshal and chief and savage. He is Idina's
[1:41] eighth fire chief. Please join me in welcoming fire chief Andrew Slamma.
[1:51] Good
[1:51] evening everybody as Jennifer mentioned I'm Andrew Slamma, fire chief for Idina
[1:55] fire. Tonight we're talking something that that is pretty easy for me to talk
[2:01] about the fire department operations. We're gonna talk a little bit about the
[2:06] fire department overview, that structure, how we're set up,
[2:09] get into a staffing update,
[2:11] and kind of how our staff currently operates
[2:13] within the City of Edina right now.
[2:16] We have a new project, Station Two,
[2:18] and the Station Two project that's starting right now
[2:22] as we speak, so we'll have an update
[2:24] on the Station Two project,
[2:26] and then talk about Station Three
[2:27] and the outlook around on Station Three.
[2:31] When you hear fire department,
[2:33] you probably think exactly what you see on TV,
[2:37] which is fire trucks responding out of a fire station
[2:39] and firefighters working out of a firehouse.
[2:42] But the United Fire Department
[2:44] is more than just a fire department.
[2:46] The fire department is the department head
[2:48] for many other divisions,
[2:49] which oversee public health, building inspections,
[2:53] our South Metro Public Safety Training Facility,
[2:57] the emergency management within the city,
[2:59] fire operations, which is what you're most likely
[3:01] used to when you hear fire department our fire prevention division and fire training
[3:06] all of these divisions make up our fire department as a whole so when we say United Fire Department
[3:12] we mean all of these areas within the city you might question why building division underneath
[3:18] the fire department and I think one of the things that's important to point out is all of these
[3:22] areas focus on life safety code and keeping people safe within the city putting that all
[3:29] under one umbrella, which is the fire department, allows us to use those synergies and work together.
[3:35] We have great relationships between our public health division, the building official, our
[3:41] fire marshal, which allow us to provide better customer service for our residents, contractors,
[3:47] and anyone coming into our city to be safe.
[3:51] As we go into that department organization, we talked about these areas.
[3:55] the building inspection division is in charge of taking care of all the
[3:59] building inspections without throughout the city of Edina. It's a popular place
[4:03] to build and a popular place for projects and so our building inspections
[4:07] division stays very very busy throughout the city. Emergency management is that
[4:12] prevention and response to large incidents. We're getting into storm
[4:18] season it's really making sure that the city is prepared to respond and
[4:22] start immediately mitigating an emergency that takes place.
[4:26] That division within the city allows us to utilize all the resources within the city
[4:33] to initially respond and tap into county, state and federal resources should the incident
[4:39] continue to escalate.
[4:41] Fire department operations is again what most of us are used to when we say fire department.
[4:46] This is that fire and rescue response.
[4:48] the ladder truck, the fire engine, our special rescue truck.
[4:54] We also have the luxury of providing
[4:57] the ambulance service for the city of Edina.
[4:59] Edina is the only fire-based ambulance service
[5:02] in Hennepin County.
[5:03] You're probably hearing a lot about EMS
[5:05] in the state of Minnesota right now.
[5:07] And many places are looking at Edina
[5:09] who has complete control over their ambulance service
[5:12] and the response that we have throughout the city
[5:15] making sure that we provide great customer service
[5:17] for our residents keeping them safe especially within our fire department is our technical rescue
[5:24] the city of Edina is part of Minnesota task force one that is our state's urban search and rescue
[5:30] team which responds all throughout the state it's one of five host agencies Edina, Minneapolis,
[5:37] St. Paul, Dakota County and Rochester make up the five agencies that would respond to a statewide
[5:43] urban search and rescue call out protecting the larger state in an
[5:49] immediate response to a large incident that could be technical rescue
[5:54] structural collapse can find space or a response that needs a large area of
[6:01] technical trained individuals. Fire prevention is probably an area that you
[6:07] have you don't think about when you're when you're thinking about the
[6:10] fire department. And that is truly one of the the gold mines that we have here in
[6:14] the city is making sure that we do good public public education and fire
[6:17] prevention. It's hard to show data how many fires don't occur in the city of
[6:23] Hidina because our fire prevention and our fire inspectors do such a good job
[6:27] but it's important to continue to invest in our fire prevention division
[6:32] to help educate those who are going through our K through 12 schools get
[6:37] into businesses and provide them with education and inspections, making sure we can prevent
[6:43] things before they even turn into emergencies.
[6:46] Our fire training, you can imagine being all paramedics and firefighters, has an additional
[6:52] training impact on our firefighters.
[6:56] We have to make sure that we're meeting national and state standards around EMS training
[7:00] and fire training and keep all of our technical rescue training as well.
[7:04] So, training is a large part of our Firefighters Day.
[7:08] Our public health division, Edina is one of four cities in the state of Minnesota that
[7:14] have their own city public health board, Bloomington, Edina, Richfield and the city of Minneapolis.
[7:20] That is another piece where we're really proud of the decisions made long ago to
[7:25] make sure that we can provide the public health needs for our city here locally.
[7:29] We do that through a contract with Bloomington,
[7:32] Edina and Ridgefield, or Bloomington Public Health
[7:35] through an association or an alliance,
[7:37] Public Health Alliance with Bloomington,
[7:39] Edina and Ridgefield.
[7:41] And then the South Metro Public Safety Training Facility
[7:44] is a facility in our city for our police
[7:47] and fire training.
[7:48] It's a training that the Edina Fire Departments,
[7:51] the overseas and supervisors, the staff that maintain
[7:56] and keep that facility running, excuse me.
[7:59] The South Metro Public Safety Training Facility is a great place, they have a shooting range
[8:06] that's accessible to the public with public hours there.
[8:10] We have a training tower that we can do high rise simulation and residential simulated
[8:15] training right here in our city so our crews really utilize that facility as much as
[8:20] they can.
[8:22] The City of Edina is the fiscal agent for the South Metro Public Safety Training
[8:26] Facility.
[8:26] Therefore, we have the responsibility to maintain the budgets, any impact around that, and that
[8:33] is done through the supervision of that staff through the fire department.
[8:39] When we, the next area we're going to break into is just our current operations.
[8:43] There's a lot of new changes coming to the data fire department as we look into the
[8:47] future, as we realize the impacts that our EMS and public safety services have with
[8:54] our city and their importance. And we're going to talk about what exists today, what recent
[8:59] changes were made, but we're going to start that by just showcasing the current two fire
[9:04] stations in Edina. Station one is our largest station, 6250 Tracey Avenue is the address.
[9:13] Right at the, just off the off ramp of highway 62 in Tracy sits fire station one
[9:19] where the administrative offices for the fire station, our fire prevention division is
[9:25] office out of there. Our station one staff and the public health division is the public
[9:30] health staff is temporarily office out of there until station new station two construction.
[9:36] Station one has three 24 seven vehicles staffed out of it. That's our engine 81
[9:43] one, medic one and medic three. So two ambulances and one engine are staffed 24 hours a day 365
[9:51] days a year. When we go to station two, that station is currently located at 7335 York Avenue.
[9:59] That station has a lot of history, originally being built as a station for daytime responses
[10:05] only that they would send a vehicle from station one to station two to staff during
[10:09] the day. We got remodeled to add staffing quarters to open up 24 hours a day and then actually this
[10:18] year in 2024 we added an additional room so that we could staff both engine 82 and medic 2
[10:25] out of station 2 24 hours a day. That provides immediate engine response and medic response in
[10:33] that southeast quadrant kind of jammed into this fire station right now and we'll talk about
[10:39] the the station to study or the study around fire stations and in the new
[10:43] location for new station to when we talk about the fire department we are
[10:52] available 24-7 that means the firefighters that started their shift
[10:56] today at 7 a.m. work till 7 a.m. tomorrow morning and then the next shift
[11:01] comes on there to do that operation it takes three shifts we currently have
[11:06] three shifts, A, B, and C. They have two captains assigned to each shift as well as 10 paramedic
[11:13] firefighters. So that's a total of 12 staff dedicated to each shift, 36 operational staff
[11:20] in total assigned to the 24-hour schedule. That 24-hour schedule, when compared to the more
[11:28] common 40-hour schedule. A 40-hour person scheduled to work year nine to five works 2080 hours per
[11:37] year where the firefighters 24-hour schedule schedules them to work 2,912 hours in a year
[11:45] due to that 24-hour coverage. So the common 40-hour work week for most of us that we
[11:51] recognize as the common work week, the firefighters working a 24-hour schedule work
[11:56] a 56-hour work week, spending their night at the station, living in that station, about
[12:01] a third of their life.
[12:05] To respond like this, we also have a standby officer.
[12:09] The standby officer is a chief or officer level that is on call should an incident require
[12:16] incident command assistance, and those standby officers respond from home to the scene
[12:22] or are used to consult with the on-duty captain as if we go through any situations that may
[12:29] need more assistance.
[12:30] When we break up those shifts of 12, we assign them to stations.
[12:36] Station one has six to eight firefighters staff to that daily, and station two has
[12:41] four staff assigned to it daily.
[12:44] And the reason we say six to eight at station one is although there are 12 people
[12:48] assigned to the shift. Just like a sick call, vacation, other benefit of time off and training,
[12:57] we have to have the ability to have staff off for relief. So at minimums, 24 hours a day there are
[13:07] six firefighters stationed at station one available and ready to respond. If no one takes off that
[13:14] that, like I said, there's two positions that are available that can be utilized for
[13:18] benefited time off or training time, then they could have as many as eight staff assigned
[13:24] to their, if their shift was full.
[13:27] In station two, regardless of staffing, we'll have four paramedic firefighters, three
[13:33] paramedic firefighters, and one captain or acting captain at station two.
[13:39] This slide is a little busy, so I apologize about that, but I'll kind of break this
[13:42] down. This just shows a breakdown of our EMS responses in 2023. There were 7,220 emergency
[13:51] responses or calls in our city. Of that, it breaks down within this incident type into
[13:59] a national fire incident reporting system coding, but the majority of these are 5,643 EMS or
[14:08] rescue calls. The other 103 were actual fires, structure fires, vehicle fires. That's this
[14:18] red column there that is confirmed fires. There were 103 in 2023. So you can see a majority
[14:25] of our business is EMS responses. In the fire service in general, it's usually about
[14:32] an 80-20 split 80% EMS and 20% fire or fire response types and that's pretty
[14:39] typical here in Edina with the addition of our response includes the ambulance as
[14:45] well. So not only do we send the fire department on certain call types we'll
[14:49] also add in our paramedics who carry fire gear on the ambulance and can
[14:54] function in both capacities. We're going to transition here to talk a
[14:59] a little bit.
[15:00] A bit about fire station 2. New fire station 2 specifically. So, new fire station 2 was designed
[15:09] to replace the current station 2 at 73rd and York.
[15:15] This entire station proposal and recommendation
[15:20] came from a study completed in 2019. That study was done by five bugles which they analyzed
[15:27] our response time and station location and provided a number of recommendations for review
[15:33] by our City Council. Those are presented. Anytime I talk about the station study,
[15:39] I like to talk about that the recommendations were brought in 2019. In 2020, our lives were
[15:46] turned upside down with COVID, which benched a couple of these projects just with something
[15:52] that we had to deal with right in front of us.
[15:54] So I was hired in July of 2021
[15:58] and that's where we really started to make goals
[16:03] and set goals for creating this new station too.
[16:06] We evaluated many pieces of property
[16:10] throughout the Southeast quadrant,
[16:12] ultimately selecting an eight acre parcel
[16:14] off 76th Street, 4401 76th Street West.
[16:18] We consulted a architect and design team to help put together our design on station 2.
[16:29] We facilitated feedback throughout the city with our residents, engaging our residents,
[16:35] engaging our staff both within the fire station and the city as a whole
[16:38] to try to design a well-thought-out building, a city landmark for the city,
[16:43] and meet the needs of this recommendation and the study.
[16:46] That study recommended in five years that we build a new fire station in the
[16:53] southeast quadrant to respond to the increase in call volume in the southeast
[16:59] quadrant of our city. The next slides that I have just showcase some of the
[17:06] renderings that we have for station 2. If you haven't seen them I'm going to
[17:11] talk through a little bit of some of the engagement and some of the
[17:14] discussions that we had and how this design came to be.
[17:18] We had about 18 months of design conversations
[17:21] around this station.
[17:23] Like I said, we engaged residents and staff alike
[17:26] to provide recommendations for what
[17:29] to be included in this facility.
[17:31] This picture right here is a picture
[17:35] from the west looking east towards France here.
[17:41] And it's showcasing that kind of the area
[17:43] that you'd pull up to this fire station and access the station.
[17:47] One of the challenges with our current station and one that we wanted to address with this
[17:51] fire station build was many of the stories that we heard of people coming to the fire
[17:57] station, whether that was scheduled or unscheduled, and really saying I didn't know where to
[18:02] go.
[18:02] I didn't know where the front door was.
[18:04] I was nervous to access it because I didn't want to park in some area where maybe
[18:09] I'd block in a fire truck or an ambulance.
[18:11] And so that was a topic that came up throughout many of the engagements that we had in regard to our current station.
[18:23] So a very thoughtful design making sure that we can really make sure that it's very obvious where to park and how to access this fire station.
[18:33] On the left side of the screen you see the training room.
[18:37] This is a design for a large space that can be utilized that doesn't impact our operations.
[18:44] A community space is important to us.
[18:47] One that can be utilized by staff for staff trainings as in fire staff trainings, city staff trainings.
[18:56] A community space that is able to be accessed by our community to use by our community and doesn't impact our fire operations.
[19:04] Again, as we compare it to some of the discussions that we had at station one, it's hard to find
[19:10] our training room.
[19:10] It's hard to find that community space, and we want to make sure that it was really obvious.
[19:16] One of the design features that you might recognize is some of the stone and facade
[19:21] features that bring in some of those design features from our current city hall where
[19:26] we're located today, and really try to make this a community iconic landmark that
[19:31] really brings this landmark to light in the area of town really showcasing where our fire
[19:38] station is and how to get access to it.
[19:41] With this, this is another picture just of the access points and looking how the space
[19:47] is meant to have a lot of glass inviting you into the space, letting in a lot of natural
[19:52] light, another important note for people that were going to use the space that had
[19:58] a lot of natural light features and the ability to see out kind of transition
[20:03] in between those spaces. Yet another rendering here where you see you start to
[20:09] see on the second level. The first level is dedicated if I didn't mention it
[20:15] before this station 2 is going to have our public health staff and public
[20:19] health division as well as our fire station 2 staff all assigned to it. So
[20:24] So we want to have a space that's inviting so that people can come seek assistance from
[20:29] our public health staff or stop in if there's an emergency and really know how to get a
[20:33] hold of people.
[20:35] At a fire station, we work, when we're working 24-hour shifts, this becomes a second home
[20:41] and a second family.
[20:43] And so one of the unique features of a fire station is it really is a workplace where
[20:47] we have an office space, an area to work, a garage where you have a large apparatus
[20:52] bay for our large apparatus that we both maintain and make sure that they're in working order.
[20:58] And then a house, a house inside of a commercial building. And you start to see,
[21:03] as you look at the second level here, a space that's going to be dedicated to that firefighter
[21:07] space, a space that they can go and really help restore them to prepare them for the next
[21:15] call, the next emergency. Working for 24 hours has a lot of tax on the staff. We want to
[21:20] make sure that that that time has both demand and non-demand time and that space
[21:26] that you can see there is a is an exterior space for the fire staff so
[21:31] they can enjoy some outside time almost like a deck that you'd see in many of
[21:35] the Minnesota structures that you drive around the city right now. Another view
[21:41] of our training room again you can see the the tall ceilings bringing in
[21:44] some features similar to our city hall setup where they make these iconic
[21:49] structures really really bring in these design features that were make this
[21:54] building fit in to the area bring in some of that height but really make the
[21:59] space a special space for our community to come attend and be a part of our
[22:03] our station. And then again another bit another view you can see here the
[22:09] the training tower that's incorporated into this fire station. We have our
[22:14] training facility right here in town but one thing that happens with
[22:18] training is we have to dedicate that staff to the other side of town so it
[22:23] makes for a longer response time. That training facility will still be utilized
[22:28] for the majority of our training but this training tower here allows our
[22:32] staff to stay in their response area and still conduct some some components
[22:37] of our training. They can conduct daily trainings, utilize this hose tower to
[22:44] hang or dry hose, store training equipment and really get training reps
[22:49] while still be able to commit to emergency response in that station or
[22:53] that station area. And then a picture just looking again from this southwest
[23:00] corner looking northeast. You can see how this incorporates a lot of green
[23:05] space into the into the station's exterior. Another important feature
[23:10] that both staff and residents were really wanting to make sure was maintained with this design.
[23:18] In addition to this, there are the apparatus bays.
[23:22] Let me see if I can find that picture here quick.
[23:25] So this has drive-through apparatus bays.
[23:27] You can see the ambulance parked out front.
[23:29] In the next rendering, you see the engine parked out back.
[23:33] This allows us to drive through.
[23:36] Backing is an area we try to avoid when we don't need to
[23:40] because we can maintain safety when we're driving forward better.
[23:44] So this station has drive-through bays that allow us to access that
[23:48] and keep us ready to respond to the next incident.
[23:52] Now we're going to talk a little bit about Station 3.
[23:55] That 2019 study did talk about a recommendation in 5 to 10 years
[24:00] building a Station 3.
[24:02] That Station 3 area where that Station 3 identification or recommendation was
[24:08] recommended to be near City Hall. Our northeast quadrant of the city is an
[24:14] area that we know is continuing to develop and it's an area that we want
[24:19] to make sure that we have staff with an ability to respond. So that
[24:22] recommendation was in five to ten years to build a Station 3. Part of
[24:28] Some of the goals that we currently have are identifying land for Station 3.
[24:33] In areas that are already developed, it's challenging to try to identify land to build
[24:38] a fire station.
[24:40] And so we're going to talk a little bit about some of the opportunities that we've identified
[24:44] and some of the reviews that we've currently done forecasting a Station 3 in our future.
[24:50] Part of that is the Grand View Project, which you may or may not be familiar with.
[24:55] and I'll talk a little bit about the Grandview project
[24:58] and what that might do for our fire station access.
[25:01] So on the screen, you can see a design
[25:04] for our Grandview Street project.
[25:06] This is a project to redo the Vernon Avenue Bridge.
[25:10] It's a confluence of a number of different projects,
[25:13] both city and county projects
[25:17] that they're gonna try to provide the construction
[25:21] at the same time.
[25:22] It will be a large impact,
[25:24] but a large impact for a shorter time
[25:25] rather than a mini short impacts.
[25:29] So it's projects trying to pull together
[25:31] to replace the Vernam new bridge.
[25:34] I don't, I can't speak to all the details
[25:37] of this road project.
[25:38] I'm sure our engineering department
[25:40] would be happy to talk about any of these details
[25:42] but I'm aware of the generalalities of this project.
[25:46] This project does abandon the off ramps.
[25:49] You see checkered here.
[25:50] There's multiple on-and-off ramps in this area and one of the important notes of this
[25:57] project is the abandonment of those on-and-off ramps from Highway 100.
[26:04] If this project is constructed, it opens up an area which could be utilized for the
[26:11] construction or the use of a fire station.
[26:14] It makes area available to us that we have been identifying as part of this project.
[26:21] So the Station 3 project includes the Fire Station 3 in this 5 to 10 year study.
[26:29] Right now our goal is to identify this.
[26:32] We're continuing to work with the State of Minnesota in ensuring that with the abandonment
[26:36] of these on and off ramps it creates some space and now we want to look at what's
[26:41] the best use of that space and how can we make the ability for a fire station to be constructed
[26:48] on or near City Hall.
[26:52] One of the last areas I'm going to talk about is just kind of some of our staffing changes.
[26:57] I talked a little bit about what's happened with the repositioning of our staff at Station
[27:01] 2.
[27:02] I'm putting that engine at Station 2 here in 2024.
[27:06] But another exciting project that we're a part of is the alternative response team.
[27:10] The Alternative Response Team is a team that provides alternative response to 9-1-1 calls,
[27:16] some 9-1-1 calls, and it's really a collaboration between a couple of cities in the county.
[27:24] The collaboration with Hennepin County, providing the social workers, Edina Fire Department,
[27:29] which provides the paramedic, and the Edina and Richfield Fire and Police Departments
[27:34] are all coming together to support an Alternative Response Team.
[27:38] Today, when a 911 call or a person in crisis calls, there are limited options for that
[27:46] resident who is seeking services.
[27:49] And this collaboration, this pilot project, is meant to provide an alternative response
[27:54] which can provide additional resources for these individuals to get the right treatment
[28:01] for the patient at the right time.
[28:02] time.
[28:03] And so this collaboration pairs a social worker and a paramedic to respond and also has the
[28:12] ability to incorporate a detective and to work through some of the investigations to
[28:16] provide resources to individuals who may need it, whether that is in behavioral health,
[28:23] mental health, or even just follow-up work of providing resources to a patient or resident
[28:30] to aid them in their care team and so this is an exciting project we've been
[28:35] working on for the last few months. We're beginning to put the policies and
[28:42] procedures together around this alternative response team and we would
[28:46] expect to start seeing them respond in the next few months. Looking into our
[28:51] future the big things that we're talking about is the Station 2
[28:55] construction that's going on right now. It is expected to open in 2025 so barring
[29:02] no setbacks we would look to open station 2 in 2025 in the fall of 2025.
[29:08] With that station 2 opening it allows us to reposition some of those staff and
[29:14] evaluate our call volume both this year and into next year to make decisions
[29:18] around where the right the right resources and where that should be
[29:22] placed within our city.
[29:24] The constraints of our current station two
[29:26] don't allow us to add units there.
[29:29] With the new station two, construction
[29:31] that allows us to position units where they might better
[29:34] respond and have a faster response time.
[29:38] We talked about the alternative response team
[29:40] and some of the new pilot project
[29:43] with the alternative response team,
[29:45] what that might do for us evaluating
[29:47] those alternative responses and the impact
[29:50] that it has on our residents.
[29:51] And then the staffing changes to accommodate the growth.
[29:56] The impact on public safety services continues to.
[30:00] I talk a lot about our baby boomers who are now getting into an age where they have a few
[30:08] more needs for services. And so we want to continue to evaluate that and make sure that
[30:13] we're staffing appropriately to accommodate the needs of our residents. The outlook on
[30:19] station three and that continued push towards providing those staff and resources to the
[30:27] east quadrant with the station three construction and then just that continued evaluation of
[30:32] response and community need. The community need really drives our response and derives
[30:38] our staffing decisions in 2025. We'll have an additional six positions that are budgeted
[30:45] for the fire department and assign that in concert with the opening of station two
[30:51] so that we can provide that response and continue to focus on customer service and
[30:56] what our customers, the residents need during an emergency.
[31:01] With that, I'm going to stop for questions.
[31:05] We have a link here and a couple of numbers.
[31:09] So I have been instructed to advise.
[31:12] You can call in now for questions.
[31:15] If you're going to call, you can call
[31:17] by using the number 312-535-8110.
[31:23] I'll repeat that.
[31:24] the call number is 312-535-8110. The access code you're going to need is 2633-344-3315.
[31:40] Again, the access code 2633-344-3315. The password for this call line is 5454.
[31:51] The password is 5454 and then you can press star three when you're ready to ask a question.
[31:59] And so I will talk to my partner here, Jennifer, and see if we have any callers on the line.
[32:07] We don't have anyone signaling a question right now.
[32:11] I want to give people plenty of time because there is a delay in the broadcast.
[32:16] My clock shows that it's 7.32, we'll wait until 7.33.
[32:21] Actually just turn 7.33, so I'll come back to you at 7.34
[32:25] or when I have a caller signaling a question, whichever is first.
[32:29] Alright, thanks Jennifer.
[32:31] While we wait for that, I just want to talk a little bit about,
[32:37] I mentioned earlier the discussion around EMS
[32:40] and kind of you probably heard through some of the legislative updates
[32:44] this year that there's a lot of changes in EMS and there was a spotlight on EMS
[32:49] this year. Identifiers really proud of the the fact that we provide our EMS and
[32:54] ambulance services through our city and so you you likely have seen and heard
[33:01] from other residents or maybe neighbors on the impacts and having
[33:05] questions around EMS but it's again just I want to outline that the
[33:10] the national EMS week that just took place.
[33:13] The mission or the theme for this year
[33:15] was honoring our past and looking to our future.
[33:18] And I really want to recognize those individuals
[33:21] who made that decision to provide this service
[33:24] from the city standpoint.
[33:26] Many communities did not and they're looking at ways
[33:28] to try to increase or better their service right now.
[33:31] So I just want to recognize those people from our past
[33:34] that made those important decisions
[33:36] so we can continue to provide that great EMS service.
[33:40] Andrew you've provided a lot of great information tonight. So good. We don't have any questions tonight. Well, perfect
[33:46] We don't have any questions. That's not the only way you can participate. So
[33:51] Another possibility or another way to participate is through our discussion online
[33:55] Are better together edina page better together edina and org
[34:00] We'll have this discussion on you can ask questions
[34:04] You can ask questions on things we presented or questions in general about fire department the fire department
[34:10] Fire Department operations. I'll be watching that and responding to those
[34:14] questions, providing answers. The discussion closes June 11th so quickly go
[34:19] log online and get your questions. And with that I want to thank everyone for
[34:23] their time today. I appreciate the ability to talk about our A.D.I.N.A. Fire
[34:26] Department and have a great and safe evening.