Name: Board of Fire Commissioners
Uploaded: 2026-09-01T00:00:00Z
Duration: 2 h 9 min 14 s
Description: And then emerging topics where I see, you know, an unstable world and preparedness and expressed almost monthly my concern about growing very real wildfire threat.

[0:00] For September 1st, 2026, I will go ahead and call us to order, ask everybody to please stand for the pledge of allegiance.

[0:08] I have a pledge of allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and it should be republic for which it stands.

[0:15] One nation under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all.

[0:29] Okay, let's see, board members, you have in front of you the draft agenda and chief, there's nothing else for the agenda.

[0:37] Okay. Anything else for the agenda? Board members? No, I'll move the adoption of the agenda as presented. Is there a second?

[0:46] Seconded by Commissioner Chan. It's been moved the seconded to adopt the agenda as presented. Is there any discussion on the motion?

[0:52] And a discussion on the motion if not move to a vote on favor, please say aye.

[0:57] All right, any of those passes unanimously.

[1:02] All right, that moves us forward then to the consent agenda, which side of number four, consent agenda.

[1:06] In 4a, we have a September 1, 2026 claims vouchers totaling,

[1:14] I believe that's a, I think that's a misprint.

[1:17] But over over a million dollars, we'll put it that way.

[1:24] And today, the claims vouchers of today's dates will be adopted.

[1:31] I'll move the adoption of those claims vouchers in four, eight.

[1:37] Sir, second. Seconded by Commissioner Wittis.

[1:41] So move to seconded to adopt the consent agenda items.

[1:44] Is there any discussion on the motion?

[1:47] Any discussion on the motion?

[1:48] If not, move to a vote on favor, please say aye.

[1:51] Aye.

[1:52] Any opposed passes unanimously?

[1:56] All right, that moves us forward in the agenda.

[1:57] I have number five, which is approval of the meeting minutes.

[2:00] This evening in five A, we have the August 18, 2026 regular board meeting minutes.

[2:05] I will move the adoption of those meeting minutes.

[2:08] Is there a second?

[2:09] Second, second, back to Mr. Chan's.

[2:11] But move the second into adopt the August 18, 2026 regular meeting minutes.

[2:15] Is there discussion on the motion?

[2:17] Is there discussion on the motion if not we'll move to a vote on favor please say aye

[2:24] Any opposed passes unanimously that move as forward item number six which is public comment

[2:30] We'll start first in the room and then good or zoom platform first in the room is there any request for public comment here in the room

[2:36] Any request for public comment

[2:39] If not let me turn over to Ms. Blank and ship and see do you have any buddy requesting public comment on the zoom platform is Blanket?

[2:46] I do not. Very good. I'll come back one last time to the room.

[2:49] Any request for public comment here in the room?

[2:52] Not seeing any. Thank you. We will move forward then in the agenda item number seven,

[2:57] which is the fire chief's report. Good evening. Chief Maxwell. Thank you, chair.

[3:04] I have four items today. We've had a busy few weeks with fires. We had three fires

[3:12] along the inner urban trail and actually out into the median between I5 and we simultaneously

[3:18] had a structure fire down that like terrace. And that is the second time we've had concurrent

[3:25] brush fires and structure fires in a little over 30 days, which is not normal for us, but I think

[3:33] it speaks to, you know, we have 15 stations and that's 15 stations is a system of protection

[3:41] and allows us. I think we're probably one of the few agencies that's able to simultaneously

[3:49] fight to full complement fires at the same time, but that's the level in size we're getting

[3:57] to and it speaks to the importance of having 15 stations. Next slide please.

[4:20] Just what we're getting

[4:22] getting back there. You know, I think it also speaks to the growing wild fire concerns in our

[4:30] area, Shalayan County, the current fire, the little giant fires now, become the biggest fire in

[4:38] Shalayan County history. I was on it probably people in this room were on the the last one that was

[4:47] in County, which was the TA fire in 1994.

[4:50] Sure, Chief Wittis and other people were there helping to fight that fire many years ago.

[4:58] It's just not working.

[5:05] Let's see, I'll just, it's okay. We can do a couple other things. I wanted to report the innovative idea of the, it's called the on-med care center, which is a virtual care center that people can walk into and get care that we're talking about putting into the back of an ambulance. So, you know, we could pull up, take care of the person. They could see a doctor and get prescriptions filled and walk right back in. I'm happy to report.

[5:33] Chief Sharp took the lead on that and that report or that grant was submitted, it's about a half a million dollar grant.

[5:41] We asked for both a fixed site that, you know, we're talking to some of our cities where we could the the optimal place to locate that as well as money to configure an ambulance to do the mobile site.

[5:56] So we submitted that grant late last week.

[6:03] And then my final thing I'd like to talk about is I'm very proud and I would like a

[6:10] floral a sprig if you could come up here.

[6:15] So Laurel, you might not know she is kind of our

[6:19] assert instructor, act instructor extraordinaire here, and she achieved a very rare

[6:26] certification, even nationally, there are only six people in the state that hold this certification.

[6:34] She, and you have to pass it the first time, right? You can't. There are no second chances.

[6:39] It's quite a comprehensive test, but she has become the sixth master-sert educator in Washington

[6:46] State. And so we are quite proud of her. We'll give her a round of applause.

[6:54] She said it's the celebration of the 40 years of search since start was invented and just as a coincidence,

[7:03] she also crossed over.

[7:05] She has led our act program to training more than 40 people are trained now in act.

[7:13] So 40 or 41,000.

[7:14] That's a little more.

[7:17] I wanted me to look at 41,000 people in search.

[7:21] and she was when she was talking to some pretty high-level people down there they thought the

[7:26] act program might complement the cert program nationally. So she is a mover and a

[7:33] shaker and I'd like to present you with a coin. We are so proud of you and you do just such

[7:39] amazing work, Laurel and thank you.

[7:44] Did I fight my mic down?

[7:46] I have

[7:51] something to talk about.

[7:54] Yeah, I've got some comments on that.

[7:55] Did you want to say anything, Laurel?

[7:58] Okay.

[7:59] Did I say something?

[8:00] Sure. Go ahead.

[8:02] I first met Laurel.

[8:05] She was a volunteer.

[8:08] And she was making makeup on her blood.

[8:12] The kid was just lining him.

[8:14] What's going on in there?

[8:16] scratches and they were so happy the kids just loved to have that thing. Are you seeing what doing that?

[8:22] Yep. I don't know if that's that's amazing that's how you know getting their kids to do that.

[8:27] Can you explain a little bit about what this certificate do?

[8:32] Here I can bring it up.

[8:35] I have something to share.

[8:38] Didn't you hear me?

[8:39] Yes. Yes.

[8:40] instrument.

[8:43] So it enables me to be able to teach search train the trainer and program manager in

[8:49] this state of Washington, which not anybody is not just anybody can do, you have to go through

[8:54] the certification in order to teach those classes and I'm a big believer in teaching as many people

[9:01] as I can. I have a lot of great instructors that have been through the train the trainer already

[9:08] that instructs with us here at South Canterbury.

[9:12] I just have an emphasis, I don't know how many times I am emphasizing.

[9:16] The education part, the open house when they do all this,

[9:21] is just a major, major part, you know, for us.

[9:25] Remember how a roller is basically prevented the thing never happened, right?

[9:30] And I think that really, I want to hear everyone of them, I really appreciate very much.

[9:35] Thank you.

[9:39] Yeah, I just want to say congratulations, Laurel, you not only deserve it, but you're an outstanding individual in the community, because Laurel is very humble when she won't tell you all of the other things that she does as well, including volunteering with the Super Lady Brigade, having been

[10:00] And an alumni of the FBI citizen academy having her own business, may have mullah, I'm not sure which way that goes.

[10:11] But she is by and large responsible for me becoming a commissioner by kind of a roundabout way, because we met prior when I have my emergency management instruction business.

[10:25] She sent me a text that said, hey, we're doing this ACT SACC class, instructor class, and you should

[10:33] become an instructor.

[10:34] So that was my first time walking in to South County Fire, became an instructor, found myself

[10:38] on the Facebook list, and sitting at my desk, this little pop-up came up and said, Commissioner

[10:44] wanted for South County Fire.

[10:47] And that's when the adventure began.

[10:50] So thank you, Laurel. Congratulations. I couldn't think of a better person to lead the charge going forward.

[11:03] Yeah. And if you if you weren't aware, so she manages all of our search. So she trains

[11:09] certs classes for all five of our cities. And then the cert team has turned back over to the city. So we're

[11:17] we're the educators for all the cities and help them keep their cert teams up. And then

[11:23] I think you do continuing exercises and stuff to to keep them engaged.

[11:27] Yeah, so that is a Laurel's other life outside of act.

[11:33] So thank you, thank you for letting me do that chair.

[11:37] And with that, I will conclude my report.

[11:39] Sounds good.

[11:39] Thank you.

[11:40] Chief, any questions for the Fair Chief on the Chief Report?

[11:43] Commissioner Chan, then Commissioner Walkman, Commissioner Chan.

[11:46] Go ahead.

[11:47] Yeah, on the brush five, do you know the cause of them?

[11:50] They are under investigation, but the summer we've experienced multiple concurrent brush fires.

[11:59] You know, cigarette, no, you don't know yet.

[12:02] I don't know yet.

[12:04] It's just been, you know, I think everyone knows we're kind of in a record drought.

[12:08] And with the burn band, it's actually probably going to be lifted later this week.

[12:13] But it was one of the highest levels of burn bands we've been under for the last month.

[12:19] Or that's I usually explain to the public. Yeah, five sort of it's so difficult. You cannot be a big bullfire

[12:27] Right, I said you even even know can you tell me a location? So I can get my stack over there

[12:33] Yeah, I mean that's why people don't want to not understand why we

[12:37] You know, I mean, okay, we have to be staffed and ran it. Yeah, but great point

[12:41] I'm not playing. No, no, I think we can play. Yeah, thank you

[12:45] Can we share welcome,

[12:49] Chief. Thank you for that report. You know, first and foremost, I

[12:52] a second, everything that Commissioner Shan said. Being here when the brush fires started,

[12:59] I think it was two or three of them with you when we went up into the tower and kind of looked

[13:03] at the response. I was so grateful to have the response we did. It was incredible to be able to

[13:11] see the first responders out there responding to the brush fires and just all the compliments

[13:17] in the world.

[13:19] It was an eye-opening experience because they can happen at any point at any time, especially

[13:23] during these dry times.

[13:26] And so again, thank you to those who responded there.

[13:29] The other thing that I want to say is I am very excited about this grant, the opportunities,

[13:35] and I'm hoping that talking with Chief Sharp, talking with different individuals, I'm

[13:40] looking forward to seeing how we can measure the impact on this, not just in terms of who we're

[13:46] seeing, but also in terms of how we're making our roads safer, how we're responding to emergencies

[13:53] in a situation where, obviously, our calls are going up, and I think that this is an incredible

[13:59] innovative, thoughtful way of really starting to look outside the box to create solutions

[14:06] that impact our community, impact our force, and impact just have positive impact all around.

[14:14] So, thank you.

[14:15] Thanks, for your support.

[14:19] Chief, I did have one question for you on the Chief Report.

[14:22] You'd mentioned that the grant had been submitted for the mobile, I think you said Med Care

[14:30] Center, the $500,000 grant, to whom was it submitted?

[14:35] It's through the, it's federal dollars through the health care authority.

[14:45] And is there an anticipated, like, time window for potential award?

[14:51] And you know, is it, is it three months, six months a year or just didn't have no idea?

[14:57] How do I say this?

[15:01] The window for, it was supposed to be open months and months ago and then they opened it up and it was like a two week window.

[15:11] It hasn't been even rollout. I was just, it's been a little of a rough rollout and part of the reason we leaned in so hard.

[15:24] it was hard to get it inside the window when they opened it up. So you could see what you're

[15:29] applying for and all the all the forms. It was such a tight window. We decided to go for it because

[15:36] we thought maybe not everybody would say we just can't get it in that time. So the team did a tremendous

[15:43] job getting it done in time. But it had been anticipated opening up months and months ago. So you'd

[15:49] months to work on it. So it's hard to predict which what will happen next. I guess that was my

[15:55] long answer. Great. Thank you. Any other questions for the chief on the chief reports?

[16:02] If not, thank you chief. Thank you. All right, that moves us forward in the agenda to item number 8,

[16:08] which is the Union reports. And we have Connor Holtung, political director from local 1828 with us

[16:13] Good evening.

[16:15] Good evening, commissioners, staff and guests.

[16:20] Congratulations to Laurel on your Master of FEMA instructor certification.

[16:28] I've had the opportunity to have Laurel help with some of her melons for training opportunities

[16:33] within the RFA.

[16:35] And that's always a huge help for us too.

[16:39] So congratulations and thank you for everything you do.

[16:41] Our annual golf tournament just raised under $9,000 for the South County Firefighter Foundation,

[16:51] which is the charitable arm of our local.

[16:55] I want to say thank you to all the local businesses who sponsored

[16:59] and contributed to help make that a success.

[17:03] We have a September 11th, Memorial Ceremony

[17:08] that's being put on is kind of a joint effort. This is an annual thing. It takes place at

[17:14] station 17 9 11 AM. We also have an upcoming retirement ceremony on September 18th. It's going

[17:24] to be at station 21. I believe that's 11 AM and then a promotional ceremony upcoming on October 22nd.

[17:32] I also wanted to mention just that the local will be organizing for some sign-waving events

[17:40] and getting out in the community to show our support for the upcoming capital facilities bond.

[17:49] That's all I have for you tonight.

[17:52] Thank you all.

[17:53] Any questions from the board members?

[17:55] for Uncle Dr. Holtam, come here, Mr. Chan.

[17:59] Oh, these are more personal, no?

[18:01] Congraduation, that you're getting a wedding.

[18:04] Yeah.

[18:05] No, yeah.

[18:06] Thank you.

[18:07] Yeah, thank you. Thank you. Thank you for your work here.

[18:11] Any other questions from the board members?

[18:12] Mr. Wonkelman.

[18:13] Yep, I just wanted to say thank you for the support and with the bond and just everything

[18:18] that the union is doing.

[18:21] Thank you all.

[18:23] Anything else from the board members?

[18:26] Great.

[18:27] Thank you.

[18:30] All right.

[18:30] That moves us forward to the agenda.

[18:31] Two item number nine, which is the capital facilities planning 9A, capital

[18:36] facilities communication update with director Veli.

[18:39] Good evening.

[18:40] Good evening.

[18:41] Thank you.

[18:42] I just wanted to share some very high level updates of where we are in our plan to

[18:46] educate our community about the upcoming bonds.

[18:49] We've, of course, had our groundbreaking ceremony at Station 22,

[18:52] the new site of station 22 on North Road last week and went very well. Thank you to everyone

[18:58] who came and participated in that. We have some upcoming presentations. We have an HOA group. We're

[19:06] talking to you next Wednesday and then we'll have the Mount Lake Terrace City Council. We're talking

[19:10] to on the 17th of September and then the Mill Creek City Council on the 22nd of September

[19:16] and then we'll be talking to the Edmund City Council on the 6th of October which is also a

[19:21] we're meeting for us so you will not see some of us here at that meeting so that we can

[19:26] permit some information to the city of Edmunds on that evening.

[19:30] Otherwise, you know, Connor just mentioned the September 11th ceremony coming up next Friday

[19:35] and then on the 12th of September we have Fair on 44th.

[19:40] That is the biggest event that we participate in every year.

[19:43] It's put on by the city of Limwood and we will be sharing some information about the

[19:47] measure at that event, as well as holding our regular activities. We'll be adding some more Q&A

[19:55] to our website and have sent out some new internal communications today.

[20:00] That will hopefully help everyone answer some questions and I'll be making my way out to fire stations over the next couple of weeks, just to chat with firefighters and make sure that everybody knows where to find answers to their questions.

[20:12] And I'm happy to answer any questions if you have any?

[20:16] Any questions for director Veli? Any questions? No? Okay. Thank you. Thank you.

[20:24] All right, that moves us forward in the agenda to item number 10, and 10A, which is redistricting.

[20:33] And you will find that starting at page 26 of the packet.

[20:41] And so tonight we have a draft resolution in the packet at page 27, which would adopt the map number 6, which is in the packet.

[20:56] as the redistricting map going forward for the RFA plan, which moves what was district four down to district two and district two down to up to district four out of what had been a map number two, but incorporated now into map number six.

[21:17] So that's generally where we are, tonight for potential action, you have the main map with the kind of magnified closeer maps for each of the districts plus some of the biographical data attached in the board packet related to this.

[21:42] So let me see if there are any questions or comments from the board generally about redistricting.

[21:54] If not, the general plan would be to adopt the resolution tonight, which would make the redistricting go into effect immediately.

[22:03] And then we'd be able to move forward on some other issues on the agenda.

[22:09] So, okay.

[22:10] So unless there's general comments on the issue, then I will go ahead and make a motion that we

[22:16] the Board of Doc Resolutions 0 9 0 1 2 0 2 6-18, which is resolution to revise commissioner districts following annexation of the city of Edmonds.

[22:28] Our second that. I guess I give the commissioner can who snuck in there. So it's been moved and seconded to adopt that resolution.

[22:35] and so I'll ask for is there any discussion on the motion on the motion? Any discussion on the motion?

[22:43] I just want to again express my support for this move and I think this is a great opportunity and it meets the intent of everything we have discussed before.

[22:56] So I'm very excited.

[22:58] Any other discussion? Commissioner Chan.

[23:00] Yeah, I think it's a really good way we,

[23:05] basically, give admins and opportunity to have a

[23:10] assign some commissioner from the area immediately. I think there was, you know, this is a

[23:20] and there's always expressing the representation. I think that's the way.

[23:26] Oh, there's a question commissioner for a month. Please go ahead.

[23:29] Yeah, as the commissioner that we would be directly affected by this and switching our geographic area because I've become from.

[23:38] Well, I'll still remain district two, but it's just to instill in the same area.

[23:43] I think this is really a worthy plan, a nice support to Mr. Chan's comments and Commissioner Walkman's comments.

[23:51] And we have to give credit where credit is due.

[23:54] This is a brain child, our chair, Commissioner Kenny.

[23:59] So thank you so much.

[24:00] I know that the citizens of Edmunds are very excited

[24:02] about this opportunity and moving forward.

[24:05] So this would be great.

[24:07] I just want to speak in support of it.

[24:11] Any other comments?

[24:13] I would just offer that this is mixed good on our promise

[24:16] to the city of Edmunds in the annexation from last year

[24:20] in 2025 that we would redistrict.

[24:22] We started in the first quarter of this year.

[24:26] And it has slowly moved along, and then there

[24:29] were some developments in the last six weeks

[24:32] that made for an interesting end to it.

[24:35] And I think a really positive way that ties together

[24:39] a number of interesting loose ends that allows us to move

[24:42] forward in other ways, which I think is a positive

[24:44] for the community, a positive for our promise to the RFA

[24:49] generally, but also to the city of Edmunds on redistricting

[24:51] and helps us move things forward for...

[25:00] We're this year and for next year. Any other comments on those? If not, we'll move to a vote on favor

[25:08] please say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Passes unanimously.

[25:17] Great. Thank you. And thank you to Ms.

[25:20] Blankenship on this matter, because she assisted us significantly in the process of the maps and

[25:26] all of the work that it took to help make that happen, so thank you Ms. Blankenship for your work on this.

[25:33] All right, so that moves us forward then to that was 10 A, that moves us forward to 10 B, which we are now able to take up that general issue related to 10 B, which is the commissioner vacancy in district number four, which is now governed by

[25:53] map six that we just adopted. And so I had, uh, I'm trying to think I was in the in the

[26:00] packets was my general, I'm going to call it an outline. Yeah, it pakes 47 to 48. I want to put

[26:10] in an outline to kind of give some thoughts about where we could go from tonight through potentially

[26:19] the first meeting of October, which is October 6th, to have the appointment process for the vacancy

[26:29] in Commissioner District 4, with the idea of having a three-week application process, but then also

[26:40] needing to have some mechanism to vet down potentially more than four, which is what our policy

[26:48] calls for regarding vacancies for interviews that we would normally do. We would need some if there's

[26:54] if there's either one to hopefully there's not zero but one to four applicants it's easy because

[27:01] they all get an interview the interviews here in person under my outline it would be on October 6th.

[27:08] Everybody each person would get a half hour and so then and then the board would be able to what

[27:13] executive session to talk about that and then come out into open session and potentially appoint

[27:19] somebody, a via vote. So that's very, to me, that's very straightforward. The slightly

[27:25] more difficult piece is, well, what if there's five applicants or 50 applicants? We've got to have

[27:32] some process to vet that down. So my suggestion was to appoint the committee, not tonight, we can

[27:37] actually appoint it at the third meeting of the month, and you can think about whether you want to be

[27:40] committee, but if we appoint a committee, our creative committee, I should say, to handle that

[27:46] vetting so that we can expeditiously move forward once the potential applications if you

[27:53] agree with my outline for three weeks, that would open applications tomorrow on the second of September,

[28:00] close applications on September 23rd, and then allow for approximately not quite a week or so

[28:07] to vet the applicant, applicants, down to four, have Ms. Lincoln ship and invite those applicants

[28:14] to the October 6 meeting. Actually, you know, give them notice and hopefully give them here

[28:18] for the October 6 meeting to be to be interviewed ideally in person. So I just kind of want to outline

[28:27] that. In addition, you have up here in the packet, or on the on the on the dius, you have the draft

[28:36] application like questionnaire I should say and kind of informational

[28:41] cover sheet for it because we would do what we've talked about

[28:47] previously in terms of trying to advertise this to make sure it's well

[28:51] known in the community that this is an opportunity because we would like to

[28:54] have as many applicants from District 4 as we could. In the past we've kind of

[29:03] of applicants, and we've never had 30, but hopefully we would have more rather than less, but

[29:10] we want to try, we want to advertise well, spend a little money doing it, and spend a little

[29:16] time. That's the three weeks time doing it also. But anyways, this is just my suggestion for

[29:22] how we move forward. The board needs to decide how to move forward. So I was hoping to have some

[29:28] discussion now just around thoughts around process, because this isn't the only way to do it. There

[29:33] be other ways to do it. But kind of wanted to have a discussion. Hopefully you had a chance to

[29:38] see that in the packet. And hopefully we can drive it something we might be able to agree.

[29:44] So thoughts, comments. Come on. It's going to be a welcome.

[29:47] Just saying that this is my first time ever going through this process. What I read, I felt was

[29:52] designed very well. I thought it was thought out. I liked the the dates and the timeline that we

[29:58] I'll be applying and...

[30:00] I think that this is a great opportunity to experience the application process.

[30:10] Other board members, Commissioner Chan?

[30:13] Thank you. I'm the one who really want to get out of the best commission. I think this organisation

[30:19] you're depending on the seven people. So you want to shop the person, whatever dedicated person to the

[30:25] commissioner, but at the same time I'm just thought about this. If four

[30:30] applicants do we automatically see, remember where one individual come in there

[30:37] and threaten us? Remember that person? I didn't. And that's where we were the

[30:44] safety and everything else in there. Now if that person apply, I was wondering should

[30:49] we automatically take him in.

[30:55] So we may not, we don't have to spare it out in there, right?

[31:00] Well, I think I haven't answered for your specific question, but I, but not for the general issue that you're hinting at.

[31:08] As to your specific question, that individual does live in district four. What is now district four?

[31:13] I don't know. I do.

[31:15] As a practical matter, that's not an issue.

[31:19] But I think generally you're bringing up an issue,

[31:24] which when I spoke about the one through four,

[31:27] the committee certainly has the ability to consider unusual circumstances shall we say.

[31:37] But I think the general thrust of it is that we encourage applications and people that are generally qualified should be received by the board and interviewed by the board.

[31:54] But if there was something exceptional like maybe the circumstance we're referring to but more generally from district for that, you know, maybe there'd be a circumstance where the person wouldn't be interviewed at the committee's recommendation.

[32:06] But I think the board could also talk about that because we don't want to, you know, I want to have reasonable transparency around it.

[32:15] And I think that should be the vast exception rather than the rule.

[32:23] We want to encourage applications and not discourage applications.

[32:26] But I understand what you're driving.

[32:28] or maybe, you know, the era of turning it, you can make your language such a way when the

[32:33] obligated to fall, it doesn't insume, it doesn't. We don't have to. That's why I described this

[32:40] as kind of an outline. It's not the, it's not like a bylaws or a fixed policy that it's because

[32:49] I think we have to stay flexible for just sometimes, sometimes odd things can happen, but I think

[32:57] spirit of this is we want openness, transparency, we want more applications, not less, and we'll see what happens.

[33:10] So, after we have discussion before, what happens is our awesomeness, apply for this.

[33:15] I'm sorry.

[33:16] An awesomeness?

[33:17] An awesomeness?

[33:18] Do we need to do background and stuff like that?

[33:21] Well, that is part of the draft.

[33:24] Um, application of a cover sheet and questionnaire would call for a criminal background check on the individual and that is actually an issue if you would, my suggestion is that we do that.

[33:39] Rich Davis are general counsel indicated that we can do that because this is an appointment for a political position.

[33:45] this is not an employee. It would be different if it was an employee. But because it's an appointment

[33:52] for a political position, we can do it. My suggestion is that we do do it in part for the

[33:59] rare possibility of what you've just raised, which is we might want to know that go into the

[34:05] interviews, something like that, which would be, you know, if we were to appoint to not realize

[34:13] something like that would be very embarrassed for the government agency to do that. But I did

[34:20] want to raise the issue because we don't have to, and it is something that would the board

[34:25] would need to. I just want to kind of highlight that to consider that. But also to consider the

[34:32] other, you know, there are ten questions on there. If there was something different, you know,

[34:38] now would kind of be the time to speak, because hopefully we're going to start the advertisements

[34:42] tomorrow.

[34:46] Other thoughts? Commissioner Waste. I just want to compliment you on it. You've done a

[34:50] real good job and I've supported it on a person. Thank you.

[34:56] Any other questions, comments?

[35:00] So, I'll see. Yes, Commissioner Fernhalfa, please go ahead.

[35:06] Yeah, I just want to echo what Commissioner Whitis said, great job, and I believe a screening process is valid.

[35:15] Just, yeah, just great, great trend, appreciate it.

[35:21] All right. Well, I think what makes since then, I hear in just a second, I'd like to make a motion that the board will generally follow the, generally follow the outline indicating.

[35:30] So, that we have a little bit of flexibility depending on where things go and not generally

[35:37] you know where it's going based on what's written, but there's a little flexibility.

[35:41] So, I'll go ahead and move that the board generally follow the policy outline in the board

[35:46] packet on the vacancy appointment process for a district commissioner district four.

[35:53] Seconded.

[35:54] So, I moved a seconded to adopt the outline, generally adopt the outline, is there

[36:00] discussion on the motion. Any discussion on the motion? If not, move to a vote on favor, please say aye.

[36:07] Aye. Aye. Any opposed passes unanimously? Great. Well, we will get started then.

[36:13] Ms. Blank and ship again on this issue. I want to thank her and pre thank her because there's more work to come.

[36:19] On this, but has been very helpful in helping to get the help with the process.

[36:24] There's more to come as we begin the advertisement process tomorrow in a three week open window for individuals from this new district for to apply and we encourage applications and we're hopeful the community will respond and we'll have some good options to select from in the interview process and and it'll be provide new talents and energy for the board.

[36:51] but also a new representation for District 4 and the new District 4, which will be positive in many ways.

[37:02] Any other general comments on the appointment process?

[37:08] Okay, sounds good.

[37:09] Thank you.

[37:11] All right.

[37:12] That was 10B.

[37:14] That moves us forward to 10C, which is the 2027 staff budget presentation for discussion.

[37:21] and this is with our CFO, Mr. Bothwell. Good evening.

[37:26] Thank you, Chair. Good evening, Commissioner. Excuse me.

[37:30] All right, so this is our final budget presentation before we turn over the cheese

[37:33] primary budget in two weeks. So tonight's presentation will follow the same format as the last one.

[37:38] I've got updates to start with. I have three updates tonight. I've got one item for follow-up

[37:43] and that's followed up just to an item where there was some questions last time we presented the

[37:47] topic and then I'll hand it over to the chief for his budget updates and emerging

[37:51] topics. So this first update affects the county data. So at this point in the budget process,

[37:58] we generally have our first run of data out of the county for assessed value change since last

[38:03] year and also a new construction numbers. I reached out to the county yesterday and found out that

[38:08] the information is going to be delayed this year. So they're implementing a new system and instead of

[38:13] getting at the first week of September, they're looking at the last week of September. So I wanted to

[38:17] That's the situation we're in this year.

[38:20] The Chief's preliminary budget will utilize the best available data,

[38:24] but it won't be specific to our jurisdiction.

[38:27] So they have issued some really high-level county-wide data.

[38:30] So we'll take a look at that and make some assumptions.

[38:33] And that's what we'll publish with the Chief's preliminary budget.

[38:35] And then the plan will be to return at the first meeting in October.

[38:38] Assuming we get the data in September.

[38:41] We'll return the first meeting in October with follow-up and an updated analysis.

[38:45] So we'll update whatever's in the choose preliminary budget with the actual county data.

[38:50] So and I say October or as soon as possible, it's not totally unheard of, but there would

[38:54] be additional delays when there's system implementation.

[38:57] So we'll bring it to you as soon as we have it.

[39:01] The second one is the 2027 health care rate update.

[39:05] So you all know that we commissioned an actuarial report on this efficiency of rates to

[39:10] fund claims in the future.

[39:12] That report we had a draft report and then we got a new stop-ploss policy that had

[39:16] different terms. And so we sent that over to them and they updated the report. We just got that last night. So this is sort of fresh. The new report. It does account for the new stop loss and concludes that the rates are about 22% behind where we should be. So the next step for us is to gather stakeholders and discuss the draft and discuss what we would recommend for implementation. So we're going to pull that group together in short order and get back to you all with an update on this topic.

[39:46] Third one is sort of a downer.

[39:49] It's our GEMT invoice.

[39:51] So we don't typically get GEMT invoices

[39:53] usually the money flows to us.

[39:56] A couple days ago, the Washington State Health

[39:58] Care Authority invoices does for one point.

[40:01] And it's referenced as the final cost element for supplemental payments made under the GMT program for fiscal year 2023.

[40:09] So in the amount that they referenced as the payment was the amount we received in 2024.

[40:13] So we sent that to our consultants because it kind of came out of nowhere for us.

[40:17] And so the research is ongoing, but I wanted to put this on your radar.

[40:21] If it is found that we owe this money, it will require a budget amendment, so you'll hear about it again, and it'll be in front of you for action.

[40:27] And it will reduce the 2020-06 ending fund balance.

[40:32] So, more to come on this one,

[40:34] but I wanted to give you sort of early warning

[40:35] that this is something that we're dealing with right now.

[40:42] Okay, so those are the updates, we're on to follow up.

[40:44] And so there was a question a few weeks back.

[40:48] We, I presented that our labor and industries

[40:50] rate, our workers' camps rate,

[40:51] who's gone up considerably for 2026.

[40:54] And there was interest in knowing a little bit more

[40:56] about that, and so I brought some additional information

[40:58] for you tonight.

[41:00] So just for background worker's compensation, provides no fault, industrial insurance for employee errors and employees or workers.

[41:08] And typically this is the insurance that if you get hurt on the job then it funds your

[41:13] that the cost is associated with that including time loss.

[41:16] The rates are applied based on the hours worked so and it's it's done by job class.

[41:21] So a firefighter and office worker and two different job classes and those job classes are based on the

[41:27] basically the likelihood that you're going to be injured on the job, so obviously our firefighters

[41:32] are much higher rate than say admin person.

[41:35] There are two components to the rate, so this is how L and I develops the rates, there's

[41:38] the base rate and for firefighters it's $4.59 currently and then there's a second piece

[41:44] to the rate, which is the experience rate and that's based on our prior year, our prior

[41:49] three years, claims, or usage of the program.

[41:52] So we have a base rate of $4.59, our current rate is at $7.04, and just for context, like for administrative workers, folks that just work in the office, the rate per hours, closer to like 30 cents.

[42:05] So, very dangerous job that our firefighters do, and you see that show up in the rates.

[42:11] So this graph shows our workers compensation rates from 2018 to 2026, and that's of course you get a new rate when you're a new entity.

[42:19] So the RFA is fairly low as we start there in 2018 and the red line is the red line is the rate per hour and then the black line there is just an estimate based on minimum staffing of what our annual spend would be for the workers compensation insurance

[42:42] And so you can see we started at $2.79 back in 2018.

[42:45] We dipped in 2021.

[42:47] We got to a low of $2.13.

[42:49] And then it's been steadily climbing since then and we're currently at $7.

[42:54] $4.

[42:56] This is a graph of our experience factor.

[42:59] So there was a base rate and then there's this second layer which is our experience factor.

[43:03] This is what's happened with our experience factor since 2022.

[43:07] one, the orange line on there, that's just the states rate, so that's the base rate, and it

[43:13] assumes a one. Anything above that means you're going to pay more for your experience rating.

[43:18] So you can see we started in 2022 right around one. We were probably a little better than average,

[43:23] and then we've been steadily climbing since then and now we're about almost 73% above the

[43:29] one or the base rate.

[43:34] So we had to consult and do some work force on L and I a couple months ago and

[43:38] prepared this graph. So I thought I'd share it with you. This is the nature of the

[43:41] open claims by injury type. So the largest one there, the blue part of the pie chart,

[43:48] is strains. And so this is the things you typically think of, right? Like hurt your back,

[43:52] you hurt your knee, those kinds of things. The big new one is the PTSD, which accounts for about

[43:58] 34% of our active claims. So a little more than one out of three claims is for PTSD.

[44:04] We also have cancer at 5% and then other, I imagine, is just a smattering of other things.

[44:14] So, when we recognize the rate was increasing, we started doing some work immediately.

[44:18] Initially, we engaged the specialists from WHA and Sharon's broker to review our own

[44:23] claims prior to the experience window closing.

[44:26] So, there's a window of opportunity where as of June 30, if you have an opportunity

[44:31] to get neat claims closed or challenge claims and those that experience, up until June 30th,

[44:37] is what affects her experience factor.

[44:40] And so we had them go in and close claims and work to minimize the impact going forward

[44:45] on all of our claims.

[44:48] They focused on resolving open claims prior to the experience window, so they didn't, things

[44:52] that had a longer term, that work would be longer term, they didn't engage in those things.

[44:57] they were just trying to get things that they could get resolved before the...

[45:01] We continue to work with them. The specialist over at WHA prepared a 2027 rate forecast for our 2027 budget. And we got this yesterday as well. And therefore, casting a 21% rate increase effective January 27. So this is another budget item. The 21% is part of that 12% of that is an increase as a forecast it increase in the state's base rate for firefighters. And then the balance of that is what they forecast are.

[45:29] experience rate is going to change the negative impact that our claims will have on that experience rate.

[45:36] So this isn't said in stone we asked him to forecast it just to give us an idea of what we should put the budget

[45:41] and we'll get better information in the next few months and we'll share that with you soon as we do.

[45:45] So we're currently evaluating options to enhance our claims management and resolution to prospectively increase our

[45:52] our excuse me, improve our experience factor.

[45:54] So the work is ongoing.

[45:56] Chief use is sort of heading that up, work up.

[46:00] And so we're continuing to work this issue,

[46:02] but that's what I have for you tonight on that topic.

[46:06] So if there's any questions I'm happy to take those.

[46:07] Otherwise I'll hand it over to Chief for his budget update

[46:09] and emerging topics.

[46:11] Through Shukshan, go ahead.

[46:14] Yeah, it's really concerning.

[46:18] So basically before we were pretty good

[46:21] along the way, but because of the accident, because of the actual record that we have.

[46:26] So, actually, let me get going out, right?

[46:30] A couple of questions I had number one, I know, long time ago when I was

[46:36] consulting with companies and stuff like that, the construction is a highest rate.

[46:42] So, how do we compare the constructions, you know?

[46:45] The information is published, but I'm not familiar with it, so we could bring that back,

[46:50] But I don't know.

[46:53] Well, secondly,

[46:57] I'm not sure they've changed.

[46:58] Some other state that we can basically not use the R&I

[47:04] and using our only insurance company.

[47:07] Is that option in here?

[47:09] R&I, they're not compulsory, right?

[47:11] We can't even we have an R&I insurance on ourselves.

[47:14] It's a great question.

[47:15] And we can dig into that and get you an answer.

[47:18] I'm not sure what our options are.

[47:20] And then of course, the third one is that in construction, they basically are actual working hours, right?

[47:29] But to me, I don't know what I'm working hours of because most of the time at night,

[47:35] you don't read that working so much.

[47:38] Maybe that's another talker because I assume that the evaluate that you've had the total on guilty hours,

[47:48] This is an actual call-out, was right?

[47:51] Yeah, correct.

[47:52] I don't know.

[47:54] I guess I'm.

[47:55] Yeah, so one of the things that we're going to want to do as we move forward with this is just a very validate that we are putting people in the right classes.

[48:01] So we have a lot of uniform personnel that may be working more day jobs and more of a desk job than being on the field.

[48:07] Just making sure everybody's classified correctly.

[48:09] And then also some of the questions like you're asking.

[48:11] I think those are things that we're going to want to invest in going forward.

[48:13] We're becoming, you know, it's unfortunate that we're in this situation, but we are becoming a better consumer or more sophisticated consumer of these products.

[48:20] And so we will start to do that work and ask those questions and that is sort on the work plan.

[48:25] You know, I actually putting in classes really important because I've my client that put in a wrong class.

[48:31] This is generally everything including some office people and that's that is really bigger.

[48:37] A huge difference in there. Yeah.

[48:39] All right. Thank you.

[48:44] Thank you for that. Just a couple of questions. You know, first is is our current experience rating. What is it comparable to other agencies within the ecosystem Seattle surfer.

[48:58] Are they all basically a flat same rating or do there are their variables within that.

[49:04] So we don't have access to specific data for specific other entities, but the base rate would be the average.

[49:11] That's that's where the industry is as a whole.

[49:14] Okay, so as industry as a whole in Washington State or industry as a whole in the nation.

[49:17] Washington State.

[49:18] Okay, because, you know, that is something that if we can get comparables, I'd be very interested.

[49:23] We do it for, you know, compensation.

[49:25] I would also be very interested.

[49:27] What our LNA right is for the other agencies within Snellmish County and King County.

[49:36] when we're talking about you said something about hours work is kind of what we're paying

[49:42] I think it's four dollars and fifty cents. How does overtime impact that? Those are hours

[49:46] works, those get reported. Okay, so hours work, so now over time because I know that we have

[49:52] significantly higher over time being experienced at this point in time, is that also driving

[49:57] up the the potential rate as well or.

[50:00] A lot of our overtime is caused by shifts that aren't being worked elsewhere, so those hours wouldn't be reported, so sickly hours wouldn't be reported.

[50:08] So if somebody calls that sick and then we fill that with overtime, it would be a wash.

[50:12] Okay. Thank you.

[50:14] Can we share with us?

[50:15] Thank you.

[50:16] You talked about that GMT, and that was fiscal year 23.

[50:20] Yes.

[50:20] The first time that this has ever come up, that they've come back and said, we've misappropriated, we've got to pay money back.

[50:27] So since I've been here we did get a bill for district one for like tens of thousands of dollars nothing to this nothing this size

[50:35] So what my question is in a sense could this be happening next year for fiscal year 24 the year after that for 20

[50:42] That's one of the questions. We're going to get answered for sure. Yep. Yep. It's a great question. Thanks.

[50:49] Other questions for Mr.

[50:59] 22% behind, 22% behind, like behind what?

[51:05] The actually raised projections for what our claims

[51:08] cost will be in the future.

[51:13] So in other words, that's 22% under its underfunded,

[51:15] or it's 22% higher than we thought it was going to be.

[51:18] Yeah, therefore, casting that our claims

[51:20] will exceed the amount that we have that our rates

[51:23] will fund by 22%.

[51:26] There's a couple.

[51:27] So we just got the report literally last night,

[51:29] and so we'll dig into it.

[51:30] It's my initial read of it is that it's heavily influenced

[51:33] by our claims in the last 24 months,

[51:35] which have been a bit of an anomaly for the amount of time

[51:37] for the life cycle of our, or the life span of our plan.

[51:42] And so that's something that we'll talk about

[51:44] when we get the groups together and figure out

[51:46] we don't want to over-correct.

[51:48] We also have a budget challenge just here.

[51:49] There's a lot of sort of,

[51:50] it's going to be a top budget season

[51:52] and so we don't want to over-correct

[51:54] and end up raising rates too much

[51:57] just to bring them back down later.

[51:58] So these are all questions that we'll kind of dig into and we'll bring a more comprehensive analysis back to the board.

[52:07] The GMC, like Commissioner, what is said, I didn't think I'd ever seen a claw back of GMT money.

[52:14] I don't recall that. What you'd mentioned.

[52:18] But it wasn't to the point $1.8 million or two in the two to $1.8 million.

[52:24] I guess a part of the review of that, I am curious, how far back they can go.

[52:32] There must be some kind of a cutoff on the club back, but that is troubling,

[52:45] and we

[52:47] want to think about that. I know we've been fortunate in I know for sure this past year and

[52:55] in some other years we have received more than we anticipated and it was great but that greatness

[53:04] might be tempered by this type of a possibility of a clawback that we should be potentially

[53:11] thinking could happen when we think about those dollars. So it's just knowing that there

[53:17] could be a cloudback of that size may temper our enthusiasm in future years around.

[53:25] Good things that might happen just to be aware, maybe take certain precautions to be

[53:33] prepared for a possible cloudback because that's how if a cloudback, I mean we're going back

[53:38] We're going back two years, three years if it is truly 2023.

[53:45] So that is something to be cautious.

[53:49] And then lastly, the workers' comp.

[53:52] I mean, I just want to clarify, for the amount you had on the screen,

[53:57] per hour, that's $7.4 cents per hour.

[54:01] So that's $7.4 cents per hour for every hour worked by a firefighter

[54:06] is going to state l and i.

[54:12] That's a lot of money. Yeah. Yeah. And that's 21 percent, you know,

[54:16] potential 20 percent increase. I mean, I saw the character. It's just skyrocketing. Yeah.

[54:23] I didn't know if you're able to, because l and i are, I mean, we're paying the insurance, but

[54:29] l and i is actually from their fund, paying the employees. I don't know if we're able to learn

[54:34] what they're paying, but I was curious of the different categories you had, which one is the largest percentage by dollars being paid out.

[54:45] Because if it's anything like our healthcare, our healthcare pay out, you know, we have, we're doing so well in so many categories.

[54:54] But in the category of specialty drugs, it's just, while those everything else, because they made it.

[55:00] May be a sliver of a percentage, but by dollar value, they're a huge driver of the overall dollars.

[55:06] It's not just curious which of those is, I don't know the thought crossed my mind of what's driving, if the dollars are more out of whack.

[55:16] If the dollars match up to that pie chart that you, the dollars expended match up to that pie chart that you had, or if there's vast differences.

[55:25] It's curious about that, or sometime in the future.

[55:27] Yeah, it's a great question. We'll begin to that and bring that back to the board.

[55:32] But I guess overall, you are, you, um, Mr. Buffalo, you are not the bear of good news this evening.

[55:38] I'm fortunate.

[55:39] No, it's kind of a tough spot to be in. But I do want to assure you that, you know, we entered this budget in very good financial condition.

[55:46] We've always been very honest about our financial condition. And so we're dealing with all these issues in the budget.

[55:51] We'll bring you something that's balanced and makes sense.

[55:53] And we're just we're in a really good position to be able to kind of weather the storm that's coming out of us.

[55:59] I was talking to Chief about this last night and this is the worst. This is the most difficult budget I've ever seen and I've been doing this for like 15 years.

[56:07] I've been doing work really similar to this local government and there's probably a multiple.

[56:12] I mean, this is probably a multiple of the number of things that you would typically see that kind of come out of nowhere and don't add a tremendous amount of value that you have to pay for in the budget process.

[56:20] and so it's going to be a tough one but I know the cheese committed to bringing a really good

[56:24] proposal and it will be financially sound so.

[56:28] Thank you. Good. Good. Good. Congratulations.

[56:30] Yeah, one thing I was noticing on your chart where it started off near the baseline and then we're

[56:34] seeing it go up and weathering the storm just kind of brought this because I guess what we're seeing

[56:39] in terms of trends is it's we're having a larger and larger and larger gap increase per year.

[56:46] Do we have any models that are looking at this to start gaining greater understanding of how we're

[56:52] going to deal with this in three to five years?

[56:54] Because if we're continuing on this trend where our AV is kind of staying where it's at

[56:59] projected, where our L&I is going up and the terms that it is, my concern is is that we are

[57:06] going to be weathering the storm a little bit longer than what we are expecting, because I'm

[57:10] not seeing in terms of L&I, and up in a down.

[57:14] I'm just seeing a greater jump every single year

[57:17] based off the chart you gave.

[57:18] Yeah, I think that's a fair reaction to what was shown there.

[57:23] We don't have any contingencies built

[57:24] into our long range plan, but we will update it

[57:27] with the new information that we have.

[57:29] So we'll see these.

[57:30] We haven't seen any instructions like this in the past,

[57:32] at least the past five years that I've been here.

[57:34] But we will incorporate that into the forecast

[57:36] and so when we bring you a forecast,

[57:37] it will show these things.

[57:39] I do think that particularly when it comes to like Ellen and I, we can affect a change in there and now I think that we're sort of moving in that direction and how do we affect the change that's going to be positive going forward.

[57:53] So I'm optimistic that it won't be a forever upward trend and we can change its trajectory that with some work.

[57:59] But we will definitely incorporate all the changes that you see today and all the sort of bad news that I brought to you.

[58:09] contingency or something where we sort of are planning for a bad day that we don't know exactly what it is,

[58:13] but it's in the forecast. That's something we might want to talk about as well. So yeah,

[58:17] I think that that's definitely something we should start having conversations about because, you know,

[58:22] just seeing where we're at what's going on with calls going up, complex of going up,

[58:27] cost going up, and these different models, it's for me concerning. And I would just like to start

[58:34] looking at what our options are, how we can start

[58:37] to maneuver, especially financially,

[58:41] to

[58:44] help prepare ourselves up, help prepare ourselves

[58:47] for the five years from now, if nothing changes.

[58:50] Yep, it's a great point.

[58:52] Other questions, comments, for Mr. Buffalo?

[58:57] Okay, thank you. I'm sure we'll talk some more.

[59:00] Thank you, for sure. Great.

[59:01] All right, well, that was a tee, tee up nicely.

[59:06] I don't know how to say that, but it definitely,

[59:11] I have re-tooled my considerations.

[59:15] I think we're like, see if we're both all set.

[59:18] We're doing okay because we've been very careful in the past,

[59:21] so we're able to weather this storm.

[59:24] And him and I have been having long talks is we,

[59:27] we don't know if this is a one year trend or a five year trend.

[59:30] And so we want to be really strategic about it.

[59:33] And when we see stuff like the L&I stuff,

[59:36] I can tell you the whole team is gathering.

[59:39] And we are looking, we did bring in the L&I consultant,

[59:42] but we're like, okay, do we bring in a deeper level consultant?

[59:45] So we don't just look at the L&I and say,

[59:48] we're working on exactly what you're talking about.

[59:52] I'll make sure I want them in.

[59:54] And my screen share just stopped sharing.

[59:58] See you there man.

[1:00:12] So we are working in brainstorming on those issues and ready to get deeper into all the issues.

[1:00:20] So thank you for that.

[1:00:23] So with that,

[1:00:27] I think this need to be shared by our staff.

[1:00:34] And let them know that this would become a couple of things we were better training, safety, and all that stuff, but they need to understand this.

[1:00:45] This, from $2.79, go up to $1.01, is not sustainable.

[1:00:51] If you want people more careful, you know, I accidentally put down the peer pressure themselves to say, hey, we will, what do we careful?

[1:01:01] Because that's happened to my other client that didn't know about it, they thought this.

[1:01:07] It's a government money and all that stuff, then they realizing that when the company has the burden, this money is very difficult.

[1:01:16] And so share with them and thank you.

[1:01:20] We can do it together.

[1:01:23] Thank you.

[1:01:25] So you're going to see some similar stuff.

[1:01:29] We're going to kind of talk about just continuing to narrow down on what we feel is most important for our future.

[1:01:36] And we've been talking about capacity versus capability.

[1:01:40] Capacity is we clearly need to keep hiring, leaning into hiring.

[1:01:44] I'm going to demonstrate some of some of the numbers to show that appropriately

[1:01:49] scaling our staffing to match our deployment model and considering the leaves and over time in our real-est volume.

[1:01:56] And then changing in the future, being smart about our apparatus and how we use our heavy or start to use lighter apparatus to reduce cost and increase reliability.

[1:02:08] And then capability, having higher capability to manage and apply our data to be able to do investigations and inspections as we're obligated in our cities.

[1:02:19] And then emerging topics where I see, you know, an unstable world and preparedness and expressed almost monthly my concern about growing very real wildfire threat.

[1:02:34] We're seeing a lot more people on the water. You know, warmer longer summers are we have a lot of lakes and we have a lot of risk there.

[1:02:43] We've had doctors, actually. We've had doctors coming from outside the area and comment that we have

[1:02:50] we have a lot of groundings in this area and I think it's because we heat up in our water

[1:02:54] stays cold. And so we we have a great team on lots of layers of defense for that, but

[1:03:03] these are the areas and energy. We see that in the news energy fires, car fires, energy facilities.

[1:03:09] so that's where I see the future. But before we get into that, that's a general overview. I want

[1:03:14] we always talk about the 5.5 staffing and understanding that it can be just this number out there

[1:03:21] that we have one seat, four shifts, we need 5.5. What does that look like? Why do we keep saying,

[1:03:28] we need to hire more? These numbers are not etched in stone. These are to demonstrate,

[1:03:33] there's their clothes, but it kind of demonstrates the challenge of why we need to hire.

[1:03:39] and why we need to lean into it. So starting at the top. So we assign about, we have right now

[1:03:45] about 78 firefighters there assigned to each shift. ABC and D all four shifts have about 78

[1:03:51] firefighters each. They're assigned that's where we start. And then every day six people have to come

[1:03:57] back and work their debit days. So we have we're starting off with 84. But between vacation and the

[1:04:05] leaves and LNI and long short term disability week, we lose about 25 firefighters every day

[1:04:14] that goes against that 84.

[1:04:16] So now we're at a balance of about 54 firefighters.

[1:04:20] Our minimum staffing is 68 firefighters.

[1:04:25] So that means we're almost filling 10 positions every single day on overtime.

[1:04:30] And that is the gap we need to fill.

[1:04:35] So now we're going to zoom out a little bit.

[1:04:39] So if we look at 2026, beginning of the year,

[1:04:43] we start with 300 file firefighters.

[1:04:45] I'm happy to say, is it today September 1st?

[1:04:49] September 1st, 24 people came into our parking lot

[1:04:52] and they're starting to get ready to go to the academy

[1:04:56] which brings our total to 336.

[1:05:00] So, that means we're going to walk into 2027 with 306, if you're able to follow me there on the second line.

[1:05:07] anticipate, we'd like to bring in another 25 next year, and that's going to be subtracted. We're going to guess 12 retirements that take us to 349 at the end of the middle line.

[1:05:20] So then we'll be starting off 28 with around 349 firefighters and then, you know, we look at how many will we send to the academy, how many will we lose in retirements.

[1:05:30] But we're starting on that far bottom right we're starting to get close to that 356, which is closely associated with the 5.5 staffing.

[1:05:40] When we start to get there, we're going to start to really come in and closing that gap of the 10 firefighters.

[1:05:49] So as I said, these numbers aren't etched in stone, but the reason we want to head towards

[1:05:54] that 5.5, that 356 is now we're going to start to close that gap of having to have 10

[1:06:00] firefighters on over time every day. So I just thought we talk about the 5.5 and I just, you know,

[1:06:08] we looked at this as a team and we thought this may be a good way just to show the board

[1:06:12] another way of looking at why we keep leaning into, we need to lean into, to hiring.

[1:06:22] So that's kind of the hiring, and that's why we're still recommending. We continue to hire

[1:06:27] even with this challenging budget. Now, these other things were pulling way back from, but it

[1:06:32] doesn't mean they're not important. We need to keep, I was talking about, we need more fire instructors,

[1:06:38] we need more EMS instructors. And we need that to be able to keep teaching our engine

[1:06:44] operators, ladders, and tillers, and all our specialties.

[1:06:47] Insurance, the requirements are changing

[1:06:51] in what we have to train and educate on.

[1:06:54] EMS education, it's not what it used to be either.

[1:06:57] In EMT, we used to have to train them in 25 hours annually.

[1:07:02] Now it's 36.

[1:07:04] Paramedics, it was 50 hours.

[1:07:06] It's now 65 to 75.

[1:07:08] And as I told you, we have to do a lot of that with instructor

[1:07:12] over time and people don't want to come back and teach on over time because they're doing so much

[1:07:17] over time and operations and it's necessitating the need to have full time instructors.

[1:07:29] So in hiring the other reason why we need more instructors or dedicated instructors,

[1:07:34] when we're holding academies, we're looking at holding our own lateral academy to accelerate hiring

[1:07:40] and we might be able to do a academy at half the length of another academy, especially if they

[1:07:46] come from in county and they've already gone through the academy. We don't need to put them

[1:07:49] into a whole other academy, but it requires us to have our own staff to host these academies.

[1:07:56] What does that look like in numbers? So say, you know, we had our 25 that came in today and we bring

[1:08:03] another 25 in Q1. We have 50 firefighters on probation. That's 150 to 175 phase tests that

[1:08:11] that happened throughout the year and those all take about three hours each. So that is just one

[1:08:16] example of the the staff time it will take just to do that one thing. So when we're when we bring in

[1:08:23] people it's not just about intake. There's a lot of work that goes on for a whole year after we bring

[1:08:28] these people in and I don't see these stopping anytime soon of us having to lean hard into

[1:08:34] hiring for years to come. And then we also talk about, do we lower the barrier? We'd like to

[1:08:40] stand up our own internal EMT course to, to get greater access, especially to our community in

[1:08:46] their ability to hire them.

[1:08:51] So that's, that's one thing, special operations and preparedness I've been

[1:08:54] talking about. I worry about what they call a black, black Swan event. We've kind of seen, we saw one

[1:09:00] in the great, or the grand canyon,

[1:09:02] we saw him in a poll,

[1:09:03] we're seeing some of these huge water events, huge fire events.

[1:09:10] We need to have a dedicated person

[1:09:12] looking at our special operations

[1:09:15] and looking at preparedness.

[1:09:17] We have great people like Laurel helping us with CERT,

[1:09:20] but we also need to be prepared as an organization society.

[1:09:25] It's just becoming very volatile,

[1:09:27] and we need to get serious about it.

[1:09:28] The cyber security and infrastructure, security agency, just put out a notice that the threat of a infrastructure attack on infrastructure, is the likelihood is growing greatly in critical infrastructure such as us needs to be prepared earthquakes, energy, I keep talking about wildfire and then we're having large events, plenty of events over 5,000 people.

[1:09:58] and gorebe

[1:10:00] We're hearing, you know, call to protect those and we, you know, we saw events in Seattle. We, we have to be leaning forward and we need to be ahead of the curve. We have large events in our, in our area.

[1:10:17] And, and layered into that as our special operations, you know, we've had some some VCs on the shift that used to help us manage some of this. They've retired.

[1:10:26] people don't do as much of that anymore and we need someone dedicated to all of our

[1:10:30] special operations. Our terrorism has met marine wildfire, energy, drone, technical rescue,

[1:10:38] and all of the subspecialties. Those are complex. We really don't have anyone else to call.

[1:10:45] We are kind of the backbone for these specialties and we have to be prepared for those.

[1:10:54] that we have to have someone who can manage the training,

[1:10:58] the equipment, the certifications, the compliance,

[1:11:01] and the interagency coordination.

[1:11:03] And that's why I think it would be really important

[1:11:05] to install someone.

[1:11:07] They're going to, it's just kind of the way we do things.

[1:11:09] You probably should have a one person each,

[1:11:12] but we would have one person over all of this to start.

[1:11:19] I change in the way we run our heavy apparatus.

[1:11:22] We know that our EMS call volumes,

[1:11:25] especially BLS continues to go up and we have a mismatch when we're sending some of our heaviest

[1:11:31] apparatus to some of our lightest calls. And when these are heaviest specialty apparatus are

[1:11:37] on these calls, they're not as available for that specialty call that they are needed for,

[1:11:42] they're not available because they have to complete the medical call.

[1:11:47] So what could we do?

[1:11:49] And you know some of these aren't cost savings, they're cost containment. It's the level out the cost

[1:11:54] of these, for example, to purchase a tiller, our next one's going to be about 2 to 3 million

[1:12:03] versus a squad or a, I'm going to call it an urban brush truck, because you're kind of killing

[1:12:09] two birds with one stone there for a half a million. The operating cost of a squad will be about 25%

[1:12:15] of a ladder. The replacement time for a ladder to 2 to 5 years where the squads would be available

[1:12:21] in six to 12 months, you'd think if one of them were in an accident or had some kind of catastrophic

[1:12:27] failure. And that's going to increase our AMS response reliability and safety. It's going to

[1:12:35] lower the risk with those units. And it's going to increase our capability because we would probably

[1:12:41] run some of these heavies as second out. So say at station 10, the squad would go out. These are,

[1:12:47] We locate some of these ladders in our busiest area, so the squad goes out.

[1:12:52] We all know that there's a heavy chance, there's going to be a second call in that area.

[1:12:56] And now the ladder can roll in that second call, whatever it may be.

[1:13:00] But at the same time, as I keep saying, the growing wild land threat I'm concerned about,

[1:13:07] this is now going to give us wild land capability at the same time as we're increasing our

[1:13:12] BLS capability and lowering the cost of our heavy equipment.

[1:13:22] So this is one of the things I pulled

[1:13:24] back on. I was looking at asking for a staffing to to staff this. I think we're going to wait

[1:13:30] to our staffing comes up before we raise staffing on that. The one thing I would like to do is

[1:13:35] request to purchase at least one. I mean, preferably two of the squad units. So as we get up on

[1:13:43] happening over the next couple of years we can start to deploy these. Here's the, here's the other,

[1:13:50] the other thing I've considered is taking our PAU and using those as squad or taking the PAU

[1:13:56] and converting it to 24 hour and using that as a squad that way at night time you and now can have

[1:14:02] five people going out with a ladder for those rescues. But say we're able to move forward with our

[1:14:10] facilities plan. We start to place these squads out and we go to open the next station. We

[1:14:17] can move a squad with two people. You have a third person and now we can immediately turn on

[1:14:24] the infill stations. Then a staffing comes up. We'll bring the squads back. But the squads are

[1:14:30] away to start staffing up. Supporting our response, wild land, the lower and cost, but we're also

[1:14:37] leaning forward so we can be immediately ready to staff the next-in-field station.

[1:14:46] EMS, we all know that's you know that BLS is what we do and I talked about our

[1:14:53] both our ALS and BLS units, the unit our utilization is going up where

[1:15:00] We're now in the 25 to 30 zone for most of them. That is the warning zone that we need to put on more units.

[1:15:09] And so we've talked about looking at single roll EMTs and lighter, lighter ambulances to do this.

[1:15:17] It's going to lower costs and we'll be able to accelerate our hiring.

[1:15:21] And hopefully it becomes an entry, an entry way for people to get into the fire service.

[1:15:26] we get to know them, they get to know us, they've got the EMS experience and then some of them,

[1:15:33] we can send to the academy and they've they've already they know us and we know them and I would hope

[1:15:38] hopefully there are a lower risk of losing them through not making it through probation.

[1:15:46] Fire prevention. That is, that's how many years ago we took that on. You know, we've done good with

[1:15:54] our leadership in there, our bringing in our deputy fire marshals, but the big area that we're

[1:16:00] going to eventually need to fund is our inspections. We don't have any fire inspectors right

[1:16:06] now, and the deputy fire marshals and assistant fire marshals, they're doing all the plan and

[1:16:11] reviews. They're not in the field doing inspections, and we're going to have to lean into that.

[1:16:16] But due to the budget pressures, we're looking at some creative ways, maybe to use like duty,

[1:16:22] that's a short term fix. But the one thing we're legally obligated to do is respond to and investigate

[1:16:28] prior to the cities. And so we are working, we will be asking for some funds for an on-call

[1:16:34] program so that our fire investigators can be on call. I don't see any other way around that. We need to

[1:16:41] we need to meet that obligation.

[1:16:46] We've talked a lot about our water marine response. You know in the

[1:16:53] We're seeing about 14 plus and this is just the Marine Unit, this is the drownings.

[1:16:59] You know, 2025, 2026, we've almost seen a doubling of those calls.

[1:17:05] And like I said, people are out on the water more.

[1:17:08] It's the only 24 hour staff to unit from Seattle to Bellingham.

[1:17:13] And we also have three small boats stationed on the lakes, one of them on the rescue.

[1:17:17] But our boat is old. It's 20 years old and needs replacement and that's about $2.5 million.

[1:17:25] In intergovernmental, we are starting to talk to our legislators to look for grant funding.

[1:17:31] I think we have a really good story to tell. We ran to Kingston and helped them other day.

[1:17:37] We have two fairies. The Coast Guard calls on us often. We are a regional asset.

[1:17:42] I think we have a story to tell that we help a lot across the Puget Sound.

[1:17:48] I said we probably we have lots of groundings for our area. I shouldn't say we have lots of water issues.

[1:17:55] Sean Rean, her team have done a tremendous job on prevention. Hundreds of life jackets have been issued.

[1:18:02] They put out warning signs. It's a layered approach though. I do believe we need to move to a program, not this next year, but eventually rescue swimmers.

[1:18:12] And why is that the, you know, we can rescue people on the surface and we can do all the prevention.

[1:18:20] But when they go under that 10 feet, that's where rescue swimmers can dive in and rescue someone.

[1:18:26] They call out the dive team. The dive team isn't going to be out there fast enough.

[1:18:30] You need to have a rescue swimmer. If someone child or someone drowns in there, you know, they're 10 feet underwater.

[1:18:36] That's where the rescue swimmer does. They can dive 10 to 20 feet immediately down.

[1:18:40] By the time the dive team gets there, it's just too late.

[1:18:43] That's the gap the rescue swimmer fills.

[1:18:47] And like I said, most agencies around us,

[1:18:52] and then our larger agencies do have that capability.

[1:18:58] Data, I know this is important to a lot of you.

[1:19:01] You know, expanding, we've had, we have a,

[1:19:04] do you have a unicorn person who helps us with our data?

[1:19:08] But we're a huge agency, and we use her for operations, logistics, finance, labor, we need to increase our capability there.

[1:19:21] And some of it just involves software using getting smarter about it, but we also probably need more bodies to help with that.

[1:19:30] So, to summarize where we at, you know, to have a bath of all the whole team, these, these are some of the biggest budget pressures we've experienced in a long time.

[1:19:45] So starting at the top, I'm not going to ask for the signal roll MTs, or we aren't that we were going to.

[1:19:53] I would like maybe it's unconventional, but

[1:19:56] You know, where are we at in a year and revisit revisit and

[1:20:00] Next July, see where we're at, see if, if we can make a decision there to move forward with the program like that. The squads, the wildfire capability. I would still like to start purchasing apparatus. I think it's where we need to go. I'm not asking for the staffing yet. I think we just need to keep building up our base staffing before we can do that. If we get more staffing on a daily basis or or some days, we can, we could implement that if we have that apparatus.

[1:20:30] instructors, fire and EMT. It's super, super challenging. I'll come back, mid next year,

[1:20:37] and ask, see where we're at financially. We need to do all of these things. I just don't think

[1:20:43] now is the right time with the budget pressures. So I still believe in all these things. I still

[1:20:47] think we need all these things. Deputy fire marshals, actually inspectors, we're going to need

[1:20:54] invest in that soon sooner than later to start doing inspections, but right now we'll work on just

[1:21:01] having an on-call investigation program. We need more capability with our data team of one. We're

[1:21:09] only going to ask for software right now and then not not asking for anything with the rescue swimmers

[1:21:15] or the boat will look for grants for the boat. So that is, that is a summary, that is where we're

[1:21:24] at and be happy to take input. Questions from board members for the chief?

[1:21:33] Chris, you're welcome. There was a lot there. Sorry, you know, and this is a challenge that I'm

[1:21:42] with that. First of all, can I ask, what is the primary stressors that is causing our budget to

[1:21:50] struggle at this point? Because it seems like we obviously AV is flat, we don't know,

[1:21:56] seems like LNI is, seems like over times another concern. And the question I have is,

[1:22:03] you know, we only have so much, we have a pie. That pie is our all-the-revenue that's coming in.

[1:22:08] And how much does, you know, in terms of how much does each of these sections take up in terms of like labor, I think, what, 80% or more or more, okay, you know, and, and then we have what we need, what we're looking to expand because the other thing that we have going on here are calls are going up 3 to 5% if I remember correctly, yep, yep, okay, that requires more cost.

[1:22:38] Which then gives us less maneuverability to actually solve these problems or these challenges.

[1:22:44] And so the first question I have is when we're looking at these financial numbers,

[1:22:49] when we're looking at all of this information, what are we modeling it with?

[1:22:54] What data are we using to actually show the model on how, if we bring in a wild and fire or one of those brush trucks?

[1:23:02] How that's going to impact our modeling, which is going to help with maybe the overtime,

[1:23:07] Maybe that'll deny. How is that good? What are we using to start saying when we decide that we want to invest in this?

[1:23:14] It is going to over impact all of that. We can ask the same question when we hire this amount of people. How is it going to impact our budget?

[1:23:22] And what are we using to start actually scenario planning so that we can come up with the best model possible that we can present because I see a lot of numbers

[1:23:32] But I don't see what's driving this model

[1:23:36] yeah, that's fair. The reason kind of you say what's the biggest stretch of the biggest

[1:23:42] stressor is there's a gap between how many people we have assigned to each shift and all

[1:23:50] the overtime we're paying daily to staff it. So to me, the data is important and would probably

[1:23:57] be very informative. Right now the gap is big enough that I'm taking this stuff away saying we just

[1:24:04] higher because that gap is obvious. Okay, and in this 2026 budget, did we not have it budgeted for

[1:24:12] 334 people?

[1:24:17] Well, the road map was asking, you know, we were going to do 30 and then 10 each here.

[1:24:24] 30 and 10 each year, but I thought for 20 maybe I'm wrong and understanding this. I thought that we had it

[1:24:29] budgeted out for us to hire 334 people for 2026 because right now, that's what I was calculating

[1:24:38] because from my understanding, we're on our, we're on pace for what? 90,000 hours of over time

[1:24:44] this year, which is roughly about 30,000 more than last year. I do not know the hours of

[1:24:50] something I had like that now. Okay. Yeah. And that's where we're starting, I'm really starting

[1:24:55] question, because if we had those people hired, what would that have done?

[1:25:00] You are over time. And the question I have is then what was the delay in the hiring that has created

[1:25:05] this, we made a decision here, but we weren't tracking the ramifications of that decision,

[1:25:10] which has caused us to now have a 32 to 37,000 increase of 32,000. Yeah, increase in hours of over time,

[1:25:20] which roughly accounts to, I think, $5.5 million, extra spent that we weren't tracking or preparing for this year.

[1:25:25] Yeah, yeah, I know you've actually been the spreadsheets more than I have, but yeah, I've been

[1:25:32] The I think it was a consolation, you know, it was you know, we're being cautious, you know, on hiring those people and then, you know, the contract changed and

[1:25:44] There's a lot to it. Yeah, the one thing that I will say is when we look at the overtime, we have about seven different forces that are playing into that which has created the the unfortunate

[1:25:55] amount of extra money that we weren't planning on spending and my concern in this now is are we doing the same thing for next year and

[1:26:03] What models and what data are we utilizing to ensure that we are not making a decision of being cautious up front

[1:26:09] Which is going to end up costing us that much more later on because from everything that I'm seeing

[1:26:16] Looking at the l and i chart going up looking at medical insurance looking at the CPI

[1:26:21] you, looking at all of these forces, my biggest concern is we're going to be having this conversation

[1:26:26] next year going we need to pause, but yet the gap keeps getting bigger and bigger and bigger

[1:26:32] and there's going to come a point where that gap gets so much that we're not going to be able to

[1:26:37] recover understood and that's why I mean that's why I'm saying we pause on these I'm saying

[1:26:44] we I'm asking not to pause on the hiring I'm asking to lean into the hiring definitely agree with

[1:26:50] hiring, but when it comes to the hiring in the 5.5, and we're not looking at the key other

[1:26:55] aspects of that, where are we losing potential funding in the modeling, in the staffing,

[1:27:03] because again, if a perfect example with the 5.5, what I saw in there was retirement,

[1:27:07] I didn't see promotions. How many of we lost promotions? Because I think we higher typically

[1:27:12] 10 per year, or at least I saw, we higher 10, but then we lose 11. And so that's again,

[1:27:19] are we taking this data point into account

[1:27:22] when we are making these models?

[1:27:24] Because promotions take people,

[1:27:26] especially when they're going into that higher rank,

[1:27:28] it's again, having us impact on our staffing.

[1:27:32] And I get it.

[1:27:33] Staffing is critical because that 5.5 drives so much

[1:27:36] of our overtime, which is a 1.5 increase in pay,

[1:27:40] which has a lot of impact on LNI

[1:27:43] and all these other things.

[1:27:44] But I'm just going through all of this.

[1:27:47] It has been really, really challenging and that's where I'm concerned that we're making decisions on assumptions and not data.

[1:27:54] Now, I'm not saying I know we're doing really good educated guesses, but I want to make sure that we are definitely making decisions on valid, confirmed accurate data.

[1:28:08] I appreciate that. So, you're not wrong in any of that assessment. It's not even a finance problem as far as the finance department.

[1:28:16] it's not really their job to model and to look ahead at that. That is a data thing. And if anybody

[1:28:21] should have raised red flag on the 6 million, I'll take responsibility for that because I don't

[1:28:26] have the team in place to keep up with that and just now are just in this last few weeks,

[1:28:32] we've actually got most of that data in and it's just taking us so much longer to go through and

[1:28:39] that that data to bring you accurate numbers because we just don't have the team in play. So so you're

[1:28:44] you're not wrong on that aspect and once again it's not a finance problem. It's it's a data

[1:28:50] problem. And until we get that short fixed up I can't get you quick data. But what I can't tell you

[1:28:56] is on the 6 million for sure there's a lot we can cut down hiring is the number one thing that would

[1:29:01] save that by a lot. But if we had to go ahead those numbers the second thing is if we can get ahead

[1:29:07] on predicting retirement and it puts some things into play with that we're going to save a ton of

[1:29:14] over time. We can't get held at L and I and all that because people are out. But if I can predict it,

[1:29:20] if I can predict a little bit of how many people might be eligible, take for instance next year,

[1:29:25] we know now we have 50 possible eligibility for retirement. I can't predict when they're going to go,

[1:29:33] but we have, but they're eligible. If all of them went at once, it'd be catastrophic. But if we had

[1:29:37] systems in play, where we could predict, have more predictability of when they're leading,

[1:29:42] We can probably lower a little bit of the overtime on that, right?

[1:29:45] Yeah.

[1:29:46] And you bring up a great point because the red flags.

[1:29:51] How many red flags are we missing today?

[1:29:53] A lot.

[1:29:54] Yeah.

[1:29:55] And that's a concern I have.

[1:29:56] Because again, the red flags are there.

[1:29:58] The indications are there.

[1:30:00] The retirement. Those things are there. I'm certain. But the question is, is that it comes down to, are we approaching this

[1:30:08] with the right business model? And that's a hard thing to say. I'm having conversations with mayors and

[1:30:12] different people like that. And I'm not saying we aren't. I don't know. But again, with the way things

[1:30:19] are maneuvering in this ecosystem, with the way that we're seeing these different costs going up, with the way

[1:30:29] Can we sustain? Well, I will say this. I heard our chair speak about what is enough?

[1:30:37] When is the cost in our control? How much more do we need? He's not wrong. No, I agree.

[1:30:41] Easy. He's right. I mean, there is a price for everything, but I think there's some realistic things we need to look at.

[1:30:48] And I don't think he would disagree with that. But I am going to support with the chair said, too. We need to be

[1:30:59] going to my work within the human services, and I'll end with this, is when I was working

[1:31:06] in the human services, I saw a lot of people that were coming in with assumptions and then

[1:31:10] finding data to make it to support the idea.

[1:31:13] And they didn't have, they weren't able to tell me where the data came from, they weren't able

[1:31:18] to tell me how it was defined, they weren't able to tell me how they measured it.

[1:31:22] And I'm not saying that's here, I'm talking in different organizations, but that is a something

[1:31:26] I am seeing consistently through, and there's a lot of red flags going up across the entire ecosystem.

[1:31:33] And I just want to make sure that we are doing everything to risk mitigate that, because

[1:31:40] I would rather invest a little today to save us a lot tomorrow than save today and risk

[1:31:45] the organization tomorrow.

[1:31:47] And I think we hear you on that loud and clear because I think we feel the same way.

[1:31:52] And I will tell you that you had an excellent meeting with Central Pears today in their

[1:31:57] chiefs, going over different solutions and ideas based upon the recent data we saw.

[1:32:02] There's more to come on that.

[1:32:04] We will probably have a great discussion with the board on some fascinating things that we

[1:32:08] have found that we can stop this money in this six million from dropping out of the bottom.

[1:32:13] And I think we'll get there.

[1:32:15] Unfortunately, we didn't get there quick enough.

[1:32:17] So, yeah, and the question is, is it only six million?

[1:32:22] Thank you.

[1:32:26] I'm sure.

[1:32:27] I just wanted to throw this some comments out there a lot about what you're saying in there.

[1:32:32] 20 years ago, 10 years ago, it was pretty simple to sit there and say if we don't have enough

[1:32:37] people working, it was 4.58, 3 at the time instead of 5.55, we didn't have enough people,

[1:32:42] we hired people over 10 one away. I look at today being there so many different parameters that are

[1:32:49] Now, just like you're saying about red flags, I believe we have significant long term

[1:32:54] L and I disability today that we never had the past.

[1:32:57] We have different factors, PTSD this afternoon that we never had in the past.

[1:33:04] I know when we looked at L and I years ago, our biggest hit on L and I was at first three days,

[1:33:10] basically what they would go on it.

[1:33:12] And they threw it at it and gone three days and right after that, we went ahead and did like a week

[1:33:16] where we never even applied for L&I,

[1:33:19] and just covered them with time off,

[1:33:21] and they were back to work,

[1:33:23] and it never got affected in our,

[1:33:24] we stayed at the base rate.

[1:33:26] Today we don't know why,

[1:33:28] because we don't have the resources.

[1:33:30] It's not quite an answer, like you say, it's data.

[1:33:32] We don't have the information out there,

[1:33:35] and I think the data we're getting a day,

[1:33:37] I wanna stay as true, but we don't know.

[1:33:40] We don't know how accurate the stuff is.

[1:33:42] It's not scrubbed if you wanna call it before we get it.

[1:33:46] so we assume it's true. I believe it is, but I can't tell you for sure that it is because we don't have a

[1:33:51] queen coming in. Thank you for that. And there's there's more things that are presumptive now

[1:33:58] and there there are laws where we can't ask whereas before those three days we we're not

[1:34:07] allowed to ask so we don't even know so it's more complicated and we're more blind to what we can do

[1:34:17] to solve it. But we're actually brainstorming, we're seriously brainstorming some ideas to work on it,

[1:34:26] and then we take and say, what's legal, what's plausible to do. So we're not just sitting back

[1:34:33] and waiting on this. We are looking at what are options, what could we do to mitigate it?

[1:34:39] I totally agree with you doing that. It just goes back to there's only a couple of you. It

[1:34:43] almost go back to what she vendors and saying we don't have the data people to get the

[1:34:48] information to get to you to make decisions. And that's true. Yeah. Other questions, you

[1:34:54] comments on the budget piece? Yeah. Well, I kind of agree with.

[1:35:00] Commissioner Wooderson here, when I started, it was 4.3, 4.5, that was very good. Now, we got to sunny, jump to 5.5. I have real difficult to accept that, right?

[1:35:12] But at the same time, you can see strings 42%, PDS 34%, that's a huge number, so we got to resolve this. How do we, there's a closet now, how do you, I'm not saying whatever it is, but sometimes you have to.

[1:35:31] for the sake of the taxpayer, right?

[1:35:34] We have to say, is that real, is that not what is it?

[1:35:38] A lot of the time you have to confront this,

[1:35:40] I can say that a good example, maybe certain claims

[1:35:43] are not really as it is, so with that, you know,

[1:35:46] people are aware of it.

[1:35:47] I'm just saying that this is very difficult,

[1:35:51] and then the airline thing is really way out of things.

[1:35:55] So we have to have some kind of prevention

[1:35:57] to do that.

[1:35:58] in the morning, no matter what data you're trying to get,

[1:36:01] but it is the real thing that would be done right away.

[1:36:04] But I do appreciate you using a squat thing, right?

[1:36:07] I think, actually, most of the Asian country,

[1:36:10] now, throughout the big city, they're all using squat.

[1:36:14] Narrow streets and all of that stuff.

[1:36:18] And then another thing is that we can not just say that

[1:36:24] we can be responsible for the time and the artists that we

[1:36:29] I have to, you know, is the taxpayer willing to pay, I mean, if I want, I can't, I'd like

[1:36:35] to respond in three minutes, but is that reality, right?

[1:36:38] So we got to be, do the best we can, and to do it, not really have, you know, I think Commissioner

[1:36:47] Kenny said one time, you know, what do we, you know, just to be cause a myth that thing,

[1:36:55] Then we would do whatever because, again, you know, your service is not something is magically,

[1:37:03] you know, you can cure it, right, because nobody can predict how many accidents and

[1:37:11] artists have been very difficult for us.

[1:37:14] We may have to sometimes say certain situations, we may not, but I have to say this is a challenge,

[1:37:21] But I, I, I re-encouraging on the squad and also the backfuel station, don't be one of the, don't be one of the, don't be one of the five

[1:37:31] station, right? Ranting a place, you know, then we can move around because you know how much cost, just to be a station. By the time we finished five

[1:37:41] years in my location, I may not even there, right? So let's, I'm going, you're thinking ahead

[1:37:50] and smart way to do it, not a whole tradition away. Thank you very much. I appreciate the feedback.

[1:37:59] Chief, I just had one kind of a more narrow question, and that is part of our budget

[1:38:04] presentations. I'd like to, and I don't know if it's for the whole border just for me, but I'd

[1:38:11] have a conversation about the deployment of the letter trucks and the squad idea that you

[1:38:19] are coming up with because I don't know that we have talked more broadly any time recently

[1:38:25] about how we deploy our letter trucks and you are really talking about modification to that in

[1:38:33] ways to save them in different ways. So I think it's worth a worth a conversation around where what

[1:38:41] the future of that and are we, you know, from time to time talking about how we deploy big assets like that is it's worth a conversation and as we're as your it's becoming apparent to me you've definitely want to move forward in the squad idea it's worth a conversation around what does that mean and how and why are we deploying or

[1:39:01] our ladder trucks as we look into the future.

[1:39:05] Yeah, we'd be happy to do that.

[1:39:07] I see, I know Chief Shutta, I'll find his team

[1:39:09] are looking at our, cause from time to time,

[1:39:13] we look, are our ladders in the right spots.

[1:39:16] And I remember years ago with city gate,

[1:39:21] I guess I'm just giving you a flavor.

[1:39:23] I remember that we realized we had some of our ladders

[1:39:29] closest to where we had the most fires

[1:39:31] and a ladder should really be coming in second do.

[1:39:35] So they have to be strategically located in our busiest areas

[1:39:38] and now we're starting to go vertical.

[1:39:40] So our ladders are very different than when we did the city gate studies.

[1:39:44] But not necessarily wanting them in a first-to-fire area you want them to

[1:39:49] come in second do.

[1:39:50] So there's definitely some strategy and science behind

[1:39:53] a low-caying the ladders making sure

[1:39:56] with earthquake that we at least have maybe some on both sides.

[1:40:01] So I'm sure John can come back and give you. They've actually been working on that subject for the future of our latter location.

[1:40:11] So I'm sure you'd be happy to come back and then we can layer in how the squad compliments the effectiveness of that force.

[1:40:21] It sounds good.

[1:40:24] Okay.

[1:40:25] Anything else on the budget issue?

[1:40:28] If not, we have reached our little bit beyond our usual break time for the board.

[1:40:34] So why don't we go ahead and take our 10 minute break or so until I don't know about eight minutes to nine.

[1:40:41] And then we're going to pick up with our next subject, which is Commissioner budget presentation.

[1:41:44] in the next subject area, which is back on the agenda at 10D, which is the commissioner,

[1:41:52] 27 commissioner budget presentation for discussion.

[1:41:58] Well, I will not be a Debbie Downer.

[1:42:02] You are seeing the same thing that you saw last meeting, and sorry guys.

[1:42:11] Just had to say it.

[1:42:13] And just giving you another opportunity to take a look at what's presented here.

[1:42:19] I think I mentioned to you that there was

[1:42:22] a little bit of an increase in some of the in the training area. I know that Chair Kenny

[1:42:30] had mentioned last meeting about whether or not the CFSI travel and registrations were included.

[1:42:38] There is money in here, but I would like to make sure that the commissioners, if you know

[1:42:46] that you would like to go and how many of you would like to go would be nice to know ahead of time

[1:42:50] because I priced it out, and it is going to be approximately $2,500 a person. All in registration

[1:42:59] travel, lodging, so it would be nice to make sure that you are aware of that.

[1:43:09] Okay. Any questions, comments, thoughts around Commissioner Budget Commissioner?

[1:43:16] Thank you.

[1:43:17] One of the comments I had would be about Washington, D.C. and the grant application going down that road specifically the safer grant.

[1:43:26] Part of it's going out there to the congressional fire of service institute, another just be going out there to visit our own people.

[1:43:33] It's been very successful in the past of Dell without. The safer grant can probably bring us in about $13 million.

[1:43:39] It's designed for info stations, so it's something that I want to prepare for today.

[1:43:45] It would be after November to see what the results are, but it would be something I think we need to talk about after November.

[1:43:50] So we may want to look at many and introduce something to get back there a little bit more often.

[1:43:56] Commissioner Wooder, say you're suggesting, like, because I think that the CFSI chief, I want to say,

[1:44:02] is blank and ship the end of February is actually significantly earlier than last year. It

[1:44:09] is the 15th through the 19th of February. Room reservations are open. Everything is open already.

[1:44:17] So we need to probably act. But my question to come into your wishes. Are you talking about more

[1:44:25] than just that? Because we were last time we were talking about that. That brings us there. And then

[1:44:31] went out there or what a year ago with Western fire chiefs and one of the fallbacks I see with

[1:44:36] both of those is your with the group of people. And it was the point where when we're with the

[1:44:41] Western we're there with a state fire chief president we're there with this Seattle chief and

[1:44:47] our we're talking a common theme versus a far story and so we got to get out there and talk about

[1:44:54] our story when there's nobody else out there not when it's everybody piled on. So it's just something

[1:44:59] We want to open.

[1:45:00] What can I think we should talk about? Again, I don't think there's a hurry, it's just a portion I'm seeing.

[1:45:05] See how it goes in November before we need to go there. But there is an avenue, and that money is still being funded.

[1:45:11] It's still coming in there, and there's a lot of agencies to get it. Again, it's not for every funding.

[1:45:17] You know, we've talked about for the years, and we've never done it because we don't want to do it in way people off,

[1:45:21] but if we're putting the stations together in Phil stations, and that's specifically with the safer grants about now,

[1:45:26] stations in, region 1710 requirements. So there is funds out there. I believe it's like

[1:45:33] 75,000 per year for the first two years for a firefighter in the drops to 35 and that's

[1:45:39] all you get. But it's still 13 going. So somebody will look at it. So again, I don't think we need to

[1:45:46] modify anything or doing anything now, it's just a conversation that, okay. So you don't say to me next

[1:45:50] you're going to bring it up a bunch of times.

[1:45:52] And there you go.

[1:45:53] Fair enough.

[1:45:54] Fair enough.

[1:45:56] But do we have, I guess, so not trying to plan for something other than CFSI, but for CFSI,

[1:46:04] do we have enough in there?

[1:46:06] Let's say three.

[1:46:08] The mission.

[1:46:08] If I had to guess, if you asked me,

[1:46:11] Jim, how many are going?

[1:46:12] I would say three from board.

[1:46:14] If I had to get, that's what I would plan for.

[1:46:16] Do we have enough for three in there?

[1:46:17] We do.

[1:46:18] And I believe that's how many went last year, or Commissioner Walkerman did you go as well?

[1:46:25] You didn't. Okay. So it was Commissioner Roland, Commissioner Witness, and Commissioner Chan. So we did have three last year.

[1:46:31] Yeah. And we were okay. But there's enough in there for this.

[1:46:34] Yes, correct. Okay. So with three in there and not like specifically planning for something else,

[1:46:40] I think we've got it covered then in what you have in front of you is the current budget.

[1:46:44] Yes, and there also is $10,000 that has carried over or that's been added every year for a retreat facilitator that we have not used.

[1:46:57] So that's a consideration as well.

[1:47:00] I know we have spoken in the past about potentially having a retreat because we will have a new commissioner.

[1:47:10] and including the liaison, the new liaison, so that's something to consider as well, that is still in the budget being proposed in budget.

[1:47:20] I re-support that because we never really have a commission.

[1:47:26] So, you know, finding out and everything else.

[1:47:30] So, I mean, yeah, I don't want to support that.

[1:47:37] Okay, now anything else then for the commissioners budget otherwise I think we are pretty well set on it and we likely won't have it back before the board before final approval of the

[1:47:49] of the budget later in the fall. Of course you can bring it back at any time, but just in our normal review of items.

[1:47:57] Okay, great. Thank you. And thank you Ms. Blinken for working on that.

[1:48:03] All right, that moves us forward in the agenda then to item we're into item 11 new business on the agenda 11 a which is

[1:48:11] Drown as first responder

[1:48:14] Chief Heller and this is for discussion or is it chief Curtis chief Curtis. Good evening chief Curtis

[1:48:22] Good evening board chair commissioners guests and liaison

[1:48:29] Unfortunately, I'm not there in person tonight, so I apologize that I'm coming to you remote

[1:48:34] from actually a drone conference learning about drones and how they apply for South County

[1:48:41] Fire.

[1:48:42] But I'm here to share some information about a good opportunity, a great opportunity that

[1:48:48] presented with the Sheriff's Department, to partner on a drone first responder program in

[1:48:55] proof of concept operation for a month, the period of time is from September 14th to October 11th.

[1:49:02] This is a great opportunity for us to bed out a program where drones can respond autonomously from remote

[1:49:10] the Ox and my colleague Deputy Chief Heller and I worked collaboratively with Snow 911 and

[1:49:17] Sheriff's Office and identified two locations in the Sheriff's Office response area,

[1:49:22] specifically station 21 and headquarters.

[1:49:26] In order to do this, we're asking for your consideration as we deliver this program and work

[1:49:37] in participation together, which we need to have a agreement, a temporary agreement in place with

[1:49:43] the sheriff's office. So this is not for board action tonight. It's just information and

[1:49:49] to queue up any questions or concerns that the board may have, but this would be a property

[1:49:56] access agreement between the three entities that I

[1:50:00] And it has been through legal and it has been a reviewed and we're in the final stages of signing that document right now pending tonight's meeting.

[1:50:11] So with that, I'll pause and allow you an opportunity ask questions or make some comments. Thank you.

[1:50:18] your phone off. Go ahead. Yeah, I just want to thank Chief Curtis for essentially giving my report for

[1:50:24] Snow 911. So that was that was a big highlight. So thank you, sir. Oh, thank you.

[1:50:31] Oh, I'm sorry. Commissioner Chan, go ahead. Oh, I just have question. So, but the operators,

[1:50:36] you as Snow 911, right? You just, there's a drone will be here. Oh, do they have to stay here?

[1:50:44] Yes, that's a great question. Commissioner Chan is the pilots will be operating the drones

[1:50:50] remotely from snow 911 and what they call a real-time center, real-time information center.

[1:50:58] And the drones will physically be at the two locations, station 21 and headquarters.

[1:51:04] Oh, okay. No, that's critical because they were right there. They can react.

[1:51:09] And also look at the call and do the whole thing and be more controlled there.

[1:51:14] Yeah. And that's actually a very good distinction commissioner,

[1:51:18] and for the board to consider as the drone program has evolved from flying what we would call patrol

[1:51:26] lead, DFR, where basically the pilot would deploy a drone from the trunk of their vehicle

[1:51:32] to now autonomous drones that are remotely controlled at specific locations. And we have a waiver

[1:51:42] place with the FAA that allows us to fly throughout the whole RFA remotely from a remote location.

[1:51:52] So in concept, anyone with the laptop can fly over the 5G cellular network.

[1:52:02] So just drone by 911.

[1:52:06] These particular drones, and you know, I could turn it over to my colleague,

[1:52:10] Andrew Heller, who can speak a little more in depth on that, he may have some more information.

[1:52:17] And if you give us a second, we're in the same room together, so I'm going to mute and turn down my volume.

[1:52:32] Hello, commissioners and staff. The drones, which we'll be using for this trial period, are on loan from Skydeo, the manufacturer.

[1:52:42] So we won't be purchasing these docks or these drones.

[1:52:47] I'm looking, because when I was a snowing, we talked about that a little bit, so is any

[1:52:54] if any people who challenges a privacy and all this stuff, are we so county fire would

[1:53:01] be out of it or are you just really sure they're the one who could probably speak to that

[1:53:09] commissioner as far as the lease agreement?

[1:53:11] And we have a whole, we have a clause in there for no, for a whole harmless.

[1:53:17] So we're not, we're not liable for that, and legal went through that to specifically specify

[1:53:22] that.

[1:53:23] Okay.

[1:53:24] Good.

[1:53:25] Make sure I walk on that.

[1:53:27] Yeah, I'm curious.

[1:53:29] One is with this partnership.

[1:53:31] What are we defining success in?

[1:53:33] What are we hoping to learn from it?

[1:53:35] How does this improve and impact the organization?

[1:53:39] So,

[1:53:44] to answer your question, and I'd like to back up for real quick to answer Commissioner

[1:53:50] Chan's observation is, at this point, our Part 107 pilots have chosen not to participate

[1:53:56] in any law enforcement missions, Overwatch, Officer Safety, or anything along those lines

[1:54:04] that would subject us to a vision of privacy concerns.

[1:54:08] So that is a conscious decision that we have made and we will exclude ourselves from law enforcement missions and at this point we don't have any intent of flying to address the privacy concerns and that will separate

[1:54:23] because of separation between us and the program.

[1:54:29] The benchmarks that we're trying to establish Commissioner

[1:54:34] Wawkelman is we're looking for some measured success on response times

[1:54:40] for a high-acuity calls, structure fires, where we can have a drone

[1:54:46] respond within minutes while crews are still in the stages of turning out,

[1:54:52] Bunk, bunking up, starting their vehicles and responding, we don't have to wait for traffic, we fly right over that and

[1:55:00] I believe our altitude will be about 200 feet under our waiver. So our benchmarks that we're looking for is based on over from

[1:55:13] launch point to on-scene time, we want to see if we can reduce wheel turns, if we can reduce

[1:55:24] unit utilization hours, and how that would impact the overall picture of relieving some

[1:55:34] of our crews of the wheel turns and call volume. In other words, if we get on scene of a

[1:55:40] with a drone, and we have a trained responder, either observing it, or piloting on a fire call.

[1:55:49] We should be able to perform what we would call a 360-degree size up or increase our situational awareness.

[1:55:59] And start transmitting that information via video.

[1:56:04] And we may have communications with the incident commander and start to maybe reduce that alarm response.

[1:56:14] If we find out that it's actually just a barbecue grill versus a potential structure fire.

[1:56:20] Is that answer your question Commissioner Wankman?

[1:56:22] Yeah, it does. It actually gives me, I guess you call it a flashback to when Boeing and the military work together to have drone footage

[1:56:32] Well, we could control the drones, we could fly the drones, we could operate the drones from the front seat of an Apache, where it's, you know, a hundred K's in front of us as we're responding to a troops and contact, to gain situational awareness and help the air weapons team basically deploy into a situation more effectively more efficiently. And so I definitely see some positive in that. And thank you for that answer.

[1:57:05] I did have a question in looking at the photos here about security, and so I guess I wasn't clear that it's just a 30 day test.

[1:57:15] Sorry, you know, approximately 30 days. So I don't know that that's a big issue, but if there was going to be something longer term, I would think that we would want to have something more.

[1:57:28] I don't know if these pictures are accurately reflect what the security may or may not look

[1:57:33] like for these deployment docks but they could be attractive items and I don't know how heavy

[1:57:43] those are but it looks like myself and maybe you know a doll or something I could lift that up and

[1:57:55] take it away and sell it somewhere.

[1:57:58] So I'm just, you know, when I see that,

[1:58:00] I think that should really be on the roof

[1:58:02] or in the behind some kind of a secured gate.

[1:58:06] So, you know, for a month, I don't think it's a big issue,

[1:58:09] but if it was gonna end up being longer term,

[1:58:12] this might want to think a little bit more about security

[1:58:15] for those attractive items.

[1:58:19] But these are gonna be flown by Snow 911.

[1:58:22] one, is that correct on?

[1:58:25] So how much can a sheriff's office missions or calls, is that?

[1:58:29] Yes, sir.

[1:58:30] Oh, my, yeah, go ahead to enter.

[1:58:32] To answer your first, or to answer your comment,

[1:58:38] or to discuss your comment about security,

[1:58:41] these typically are installed on rooftops,

[1:58:44] because this is just a temporary installation.

[1:58:46] These will be on the ground.

[1:58:48] The reason why we have chosen station 21

[1:58:51] and headquarters is because we do have this secured area. So that's why we've chosen these to places to

[1:58:59] place our drones.

[1:59:02] To what was the next point? Where are we going next?

[1:59:07] Home is flown by snow and I want on snow. Home is kind of sure of softest calls.

[1:59:12] Yes, right now with the real-time information center, SESO has offered to pilot the drones

[1:59:20] in addition to snow 911 pilots as well.

[1:59:26] Great. Other questions, comments?

[1:59:32] So chief, what do you need from us tonight?

[1:59:34] I know this is on for discussion.

[1:59:36] Nothing more.

[1:59:38] We don't need any action at all tonight.

[1:59:41] This is just us kind of informing you

[1:59:45] and at a later date when we get a formal Isle,

[1:59:48] then we'll need to bring more in, get more detailed,

[1:59:51] and then discuss with the board

[1:59:53] if they want to engage in a longer term agreement if this trial period actually is successful

[1:59:58] and produces what they want to see.

[2:00:00] Great. All right. Well, thank you and thank you for the information. Interesting.

[2:00:08] All right. That moves us forward in the agenda then to item 11B, which is national disaster prepared, mispreparedness, month resolution for adoption. And this is with director, really.

[2:00:21] Thank you, commissioners. We've been talking about this a little bit already tonight. You know, disasters can strike our community without warning.

[2:00:28] They can affect our response, they can affect our residents' lives, and preparing for disasters

[2:00:36] can change the outcome for people.

[2:00:41] We have a couple of ways that we're really invested in helping people prepare for disasters.

[2:00:47] We have a free online class that's one hour long.

[2:00:50] You can sign up right now.

[2:00:51] You can take it tonight in the comfort of your own home, if anybody's off their listening.

[2:00:54] and then we also offer a cert program to help people prepare for disasters.

[2:01:00] September is disaster preparedness month and so we want to recognize that tonight and

[2:01:05] just take note of the people who are helping our community prepare.

[2:01:11] Laurel Sprig, who's recognized here earlier tonight.

[2:01:14] Sean Rguzman, Megan LeBlanc, they all make up the outreach team and all take part in helping

[2:01:19] prepare our community for disasters. Before you, you have a proclamation that declare September

[2:01:26] as national preparedness month, and we would ask the board adopt that proclamation in order

[2:01:31] to recognize this important time. Any general questions from the board members for director Vali or

[2:01:39] the chief about the issue? If not, I'll move the adoption of resolution to 09102026-21,

[2:01:47] uh... recognize national preparedness month twenty twenty six

[2:01:52] that was a second

[2:01:53] that was a commissioner for a half

[2:01:58] second by commissioner for an off

[2:02:00] on the resolution

[2:02:02] uh... is there discussion on the motion

[2:02:06] and i would just note that the resolution ends with uh... the resolved portion is resolved

[2:02:12] that the self-county fire self-county board of commissioners

[2:02:15] Hereby recognize the September as National Preparedness Month and encourages community members to learn more about disaster preparedness and take advantage of free preparedness resources and online learning opportunities available through South County for.

[2:02:31] Any other discussion if not move to a vote on favor please say aye.

[2:02:35] Aye.

[2:02:36] Any opposed passes unanimously.

[2:02:39] Great.

[2:02:40] Thank you.

[2:02:41] Thank you.

[2:02:41] All right, that moves us forward in the agenda to item 11C, which is Patriot Day and National Day of Service and Remembrance Resolution for Adduction, and this is at page, starting at page 58 of the packet, Director V-Lay.

[2:02:59] Thank you. This year marks 25 years since September 11, 2001.

[2:03:04] and we will again be hosting in partnership with the local 1828.

[2:03:10] We'll be hosting a rememberant ceremony outside of downtown administration 17 at the 911 Memorial.

[2:03:19] That will begin at 911 AM on Friday, September 11th and it will feature the South County Honor Guard and Edmund's Mayor Mike Rose.

[2:03:27] will also be there to speak. This is an important day for firefighters and law enforcement to

[2:03:34] continue remembering we do think the efforts of retired South County firefighter David

[2:03:41] Bronco Erickson who spends his time every year. He volunteers his time to put this ceremony

[2:03:49] together and so we appreciate those efforts of him to keep this ceremony going and the

[2:03:57] have another proclamation before you to declare the Patriot Day a national day of service

[2:04:04] and remember it and we do ask the board that adopt that proclamation.

[2:04:10] Any questions generally from the board for Dr. Billy?

[2:04:15] Commissioner Chen? I just didn't even comment. I can't believe it's 25 years ago.

[2:04:20] But I, which is very important, I still remember we, we bought the whole steel back in here and what

[2:04:26] to do so. I'm encouraging our commission to go to staff for the memorial service.

[2:04:34] Any other general questions? If not, I'll move the adoption of Resolution 0901-2026-20.

[2:04:42] Patriot Day and National Day of Service and Remembrance Proclamation.

[2:04:46] Seconded by Commissioner Welcomeman.

[2:04:47] We've been moving the seconded to adopt that resolution, which concludes with now, therefore,

[2:04:51] be it proclaimed by the South County Fire Board of Commissioners.

[2:04:54] 25 years later, we pay tribute to and remember all who lost their lives as a result of the terrorist attack.

[2:05:04] Mr. Speaker.

[2:05:06] Any other discussion on the motion?

[2:05:29] If not, we'll move to a vote.

[2:05:32] updates and that starts first with Capitol facilities. Commissioner Walker. Our next meeting is on Monday.

[2:05:39] We'll continue to have conversations about the bond and really appreciate everything the team is doing.

[2:05:46] Great. Thank you. Second is finance and human resources commissioner Chan.

[2:05:52] Yeah, we're going to move the meeting on next week, Thursday.

[2:05:58] because CFO have a on the foot week. He's moving his son to a new dormitory. That's

[2:06:07] which is one point. Thank you.

[2:06:10] Thank you. Next up third is Intergovernmental Commissioner. What is?

[2:06:15] Had a meeting last week I did not attempt if anybody wants to bring that up. I was on

[2:06:24] that we had a great meeting was updated on some key conversations that we're having throughout

[2:06:31] the RFA and just really appreciate everything that the team is doing to continue those

[2:06:38] conversations communicate with our community leaders and just create a strong relationship

[2:06:47] listening to their needs.

[2:06:49] Okay, great. Thank you. And then lastly, fourth is snow 911 commissioner for an hour.

[2:06:55] Yeah, as the discussion around the drones was probably one of the biggest highlights

[2:07:01] beyond some of the budget issues for snow 911. I did raise the question about jurisdiction

[2:07:08] on acceptance of drone usage and the sheriff indicated that all of the proper agreements

[2:07:15] we're in place with the jurisdictions that they would be flying over from the city point of view

[2:07:20] and that those concerns were addressed. So, other net, nothing else to report?

[2:07:27] Great, thank you. That moves us forward to item 13, which is Commissioner

[2:07:32] comments, any Commissioner comments? I believe everybody know where my Cooper's passing, but they

[2:07:38] scheduled services for the 26 September, it's on us at our date on all of you.

[2:07:44] He's in buddy's career.

[2:07:46] Yeah, crazy.

[2:07:46] Oh, send it to you.

[2:07:47] I plan to go on to it.

[2:07:50] Well, state representative Cooper, county council member Cooper.

[2:07:54] Mayor Cooper was a good friend to South County fire over the years in different ways

[2:07:59] and supportive of South County fire.

[2:08:02] So he retired and moved out of the area.

[2:08:07] And we remember his passing and his good influence on South County fire over the years.

[2:08:13] So that's sad to hear that his passing, but he was not only worked in the fire service,

[2:08:20] but he helped the fire service in various ways and his elected positions.

[2:08:25] And his daughter did work for us for some of your students.

[2:08:28] Yes, yes, indeed.

[2:08:28] That's what she did.

[2:08:30] For the boy.

[2:08:31] But I think it was amazing that I think I forgot the wood city she moved to, but he was still a council.

[2:08:39] Yeah.

[2:08:41] Alma, and he'd be going to see the council.

[2:08:44] That guy's amazing.

[2:08:46] He's always in the public service.

[2:08:49] I appreciate him very much.

[2:08:52] Any other commissioner comments?

[2:08:55] Any other commissioner comments?

[2:08:57] All right.

[2:08:57] If not, then our next meeting is next Tuesday for our work session.

[2:09:02] 7 o'clock right back here in the boardroom.

[2:09:04] And without any other business to come before the board,

[2:09:06] without objection, we are adjourned.

[2:09:08] Thank you.

[2:09:13] Recording stopped.

Board of Fire Commissioners

Agenda

Transcript