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HomeMy WebLinkAboutSPAC.2023.0426.MinutesTOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS MINUTES OF THE REGULAR MEETING OF THE STRATEGIC PLANNING ADVISORY COMMISSION April 26, 2023 1. CALL TO ORDER Vice Chairman Bernie Hoenle called to order the meeting of the Strategic Planning Advisory Commission at 4:00 p.m. 2. ROLL CALL Members Present: Vice Chairman Bernie Hoenle; Commissioner Kevin Beck; Commissioner Jill Keefe; Commissioner Cynthia Magazine; Commissioner Geoff Yazzetta Members Absent Chairman Patrick Garman; Commissioner Mary Edman Staff Present: Deputy Town Manager David Trimble; Executive Assistant Angela Padgett -Espiritu 3. CALL TO THE PUBLIC Pursuant to A le S. gsaasto$H), pudic common( rs permitted (not required) on matters NOT listed on the agenda. Any such comment O must be within thejunsdictjon of the Council, and (hi is subject ro reasonable time, place, and manner restrictions. The council will not discuss or lake legal action on matters raised during Call to the Public unless the matters am properly noticed for discussion and legal action- At the conclusion of the Call lo the PUWk, Individual councilmembers may (I) respond to criticism, (11) ask staff toreWOW a matter, or (i6) ask that the matter be paced on a future Council agenda. No one from the public spoke. 4. CONSIDERATION AND POSSIBLE ACTION: Approval of the minutes of the Regular Meeting of March 22, 2023 MOVED BY Commissioner Jill Keefe to approve the minutes of March 22, 2023, Strategic Planning Advisory Commission Meeting, SECONDED BY Commissioner Kevin Beck Vote: 5 — 0 passed — Unanimously 5. REPORTS BY COMMISSIONERS AND TOWN MANAGER 6. PRESENTAION: Fountain Hills Fire Department by Chief Dave Ott 7. DISCUSSION AND POSSIBLE ACTION: Future Agenda Topics 8. COMMENTS FROM THE CHAIRMAN 9. NEXT MEETING DATE: Wednesday, May 24, 2023 10. ADJOURNMENT MOVED BY Commissioner Cynthia Magazine to adjourn the meeting of the Strategic Planning Advisory Commission Meeting at 5:00 p.m., SECONDED BY Commissioner Jill Keefe. Vote: 5 — 0 passed — Unanimously TOW Patric EST AND PREPAED gela Padg3"Es•'ritu, Exec ive Assistant CERTIFICATION HILLS A AI Garman, Chairman I hereby certify that the foregoing minutes are a true and correct copy of the minutes of the Regular Meeting held by the Strategic Planning Advisory Commission in the Town Hall Council Chambers on the 26'h day of April 2023 that the meeting was duly called and that a quorum was present DAT D this 28 da of Juyne 2023. Ange a Padgett spin ., . - • ssistant TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 1 of 24 APRIL 26, 2023, STRATEGIC PLANNING ADVISORY COMMISSION Post -Production File Town of Fountain Hills Strategic Planning Advisory Commission Meeting April 26, 2023 Transcription Provided By: eScribers, LLC Transcription is provided in order to facilitate communication accessibility and may not be a totally verbatim record of the proceedings. Page I of 24 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 2 of 24 APRIL 26, 2023, STRATEGIC PLANNING ADVISORY COMMISSION HOENLE: Okay. Calling the meeting to order in place of Chairman Garman, who has gone away on business. Angela, would you please conduct the rollcall? PADGETT-ESPIRITU: Thank you, Vice Chair. Chair Garman? Vice Chair Hoenle? HOENLE: Here. PADGETT-ESPIRITU: Commissioner Beck? BECK: Here. PADGETT-ESPIRITU: Commissioner Edman? Commissioner Keefe? KEEFE: Here. PADGETT-ESPIRITU: Commissioner Magazine? MAGAZINE: Here. PADGETT-ESPIRITU: Commissioner Yazzetta? YAZZETTA: Here. PADGETT-ESPIRITU: We have a quorum. Thank you. HOENLE: Thank you. Okay. Call out to the public. Not seeing any other public than our guest speaker, well move onto approval of the minutes from the last meeting; did everybody get a chance to look at them? I think we're doing better, making more concise statements. BECK: We'll get better. HOENLE: Any comments? Any corrections? Any motions? KEEFE: Motion to accept? HOENLE: Second? BECK: Second. HOENLE: All in favor say aye. ALL: Aye. HOENLE: Motion carries. Okay. Everybody gets a turn. We'll start with Geoff YAZZETTA: Thank you, Vice Chair. Good aftemoon, everyone. Just a couple of updates from my end. This month has been a busy one for me. I joined the International Dark Sky Discovery Board, thanks to Commissioner Beck who recommended me. So I'm looking forward to working with that Page2of24 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 3 of 24 APRIL 26, 2023, STRATEGIC PLANNING ADVISORY COMMISSION group to bring that project through to completion. And I am also on the Fountain Hills cultural and civic association. I will be taking over the role of the civic affairs chair. So a couple of things from my end. That's all I've got at the moment. MAGAZINE: That was a lot. Alan and I just returned from ten days in Charleston, South Carolina -- beautiful, beautiful city. And visiting his son in New Orleans. So with that, the only thing I'm up on is [hat Alan actually did the Art on the Avenue today and he thoroughly enjoyed and he's going to start doing it next year. That's it. HOENLE: Jill? KEEFE: No updates. HOENLE: Go for it. BECK: So Geoff, welcome to Dark Sky Discovery Center board, it's wonderful to have you. As an update, I mentioned I would update as we go with the board. We did meet with Arizona State University and it was a very good meeting. Action item was to come up with five top ways we could collaborate with them, they also will do the same. But we met with the senior staff, James O'Brien who's the chief operating office, I think, under Michael Crow, who's the president. And we met with the different schools, and had tours, and it was wonderful. So there are some opportunities. I mean, now, we have to figure out what that means. It may mean that with the observatory that we build, either in steps or all together; right now, it's all together. Maybe ASU takes a dedicated part of that and uses it for research as they don't have a dedicated observatory, and that's a real benefit they see; everybody there was excited. So hopefully, we inspire them enough to do something about that. So we'll see how it goes. Secondly, this will be my last meeting in person for a while, I'm afraid. I'm heading to Europe Friday, to Barcelona and then I'm back and forth, but will be in Indiana for most of the summer, I believe. If not, if I can get out back here, I will. But I will be on Zoom on every meeting and will be remote, as I was last time. I apologize for that. It's just, the weather's a little bit nicer over there. So anyway, that's all from me. HOENLE: Any comments from the town? Page 3 of 24 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 4 of 24 APRIL 26, 2023, STRATEGIC PLANNING ADVISORY COMMISSION TRIMBLE: Not really. I just wanted to say that I'm just sitting in, as you probably know. I don't know if we discussed it last time, but Grady Miller retired and Rachael Goodwin would normally be here, she's the interim town manager. But she is handling some issues she couldn't schedule around for this. So I'll just be pinch-hitting once again, for her. HOENLE: Well, thanks for attending. I just finished up, before this meeting, a streets summary of our citizen working group. And the two main things that came out of that is, were still in a process of assessing the latest report that was given to the town by the contractor; a great deal of data. And so now we have to put some priorities to it and lay out some ideas and determination for different funding options, which is not going to be any small feat. The other thing that's going at the same time, that will impact some of the decisions, is the core sampling that the town has already started. The rut checks on the streets and check down through the base layer, some of the areas that have gone beyond what the contract calls for for the assessment. So plenty of work. And as Justin mentioned at the previous town council meeting, other things need to be taken into consideration also, such as utility considerations. If there's going to be work done in a certain area, you don't want to pave it and then dig it up. So there are multiple facets to come up with the scheduling and how we proceed. So it's been a very interesting and detailed project. More to come on that one. Okay. Next, we have our guest speaker for the day, Chief Dave Ott from the fire department and he'll tell us what's currently happening and what may be in the near future. Chief Ott? OTT: Vice Chair, Commissioners, Mr. Trimble, boss. t want to thank you for inviting me here today and letting me give you an update on where were at with the things int eh world of fire. And I just want to make a couple of comments. We're excited about the Dark Sky project as well. We're really looking forward to that. Not only as the fire chief, but also as a town resident. And does Alan know that this was the last market of the season? You said he was at the Art of the Avenue today -- MAGAZINE: Yes. Yes, he knows it. Page 4 of 24 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 5 of 24 APRIL 26, 2023, STRATEGIC PLANNING ADVISORY COMMISSION OTT: Does he know it was the last one? MAGAZINE: He was trying it out to see if he wants to do it next year, and he does. OTT: Okay. So he did have a strategic plan involved -- MAGAZINE: Absolutely. OTT: Okay. All right. There's a couple of things going on with us and Dave Trimble is part of the -- we have a transition team put in place. For those of you that don't know, for probably 37 years - and this kind of predates the-- well, the fire district predates quite a few things, but Rural Metro was part of the original fire district as the fire provider in Fountain Hills. And we've had a relationship with Rural Metro for 30-plus years. They also had done some work for McCulloch, at a point where Rural was kind of a one -call. You could call Lou Weitzman and he would say, hey, if you need this well come out and take care of it for you. So initially, they provided some kind of onsite security, I believe, for McCulloch and then that just kind of transformed into a couple of guys and a fire truck. And then transformed into what we have today, which is two stations. We have ten personnel on duty every day with two chiefs, two fire engines, a ladder truck, two brush trucks, a couple of staff vehicles, a spare pickup truck. And we just recently acquired a Polaris UTV to help us with things like the art festival and trail rescues into the preserve. We just recently sent one of our captains out to a training -- safety training, train -the -trainer for UTV, so that we can do that safely And it was put on by a competitive insurance company that ensures quite a few fire departments, but we'll have that and we'll have all that documented for the risk management side of things. So they are a little bit different and we run quite a few UTV accidents up in Sycamore Creek in Four Peaks area. Mainly, because the ambulances that run out of here, that's their area. We don't necessarily send the fire department out there unless it's a big incident. And Fort McDowell runs quite a bit up there, so we'll back for Fort McDowell when they go out on calls. So council voted in October of 2022, to kind of move forward with consideration to cancel the contract with Rural Metro. November of 2022, they voted at the first meeting to terminate the contract with Rural Metro and move towards having a town -run fire department. So well transition from the private department to a municipal department Page 5 of 24 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 6 of 24 APRIL 16, 2023, STRATEGIC PLANNING ADVISORY COMMISSION with a start date of January 1 st, 20424; that corresponds with the end of the contract. And for us it's just another day. It might happen to be New Year's Day, but in our world it's just another day you come to work. And the plan right now is to switch shirts at midnight, from a Rural Metro Fire shirt to one that says Fountain Hills Fire Department on the back. And really, the only difference that will happen is -- well, there's a lot of things, but it would be a seamless transition. You'll call 911 -- it currently goes to the sheriffs department. They push a button now that transfers that call to a Rural Metro dispatch center. What will happen at midnight on January 1st, they'll transfer that call to Mesa Regional Dispatch Center and mesa will dispatch us as municipal fire department. In your strategic plan, we don't have specific priorities that identify the fire department as a whole but there arc interim priorities. Public safety is a key in a number of them and 1 think that we kind of meet those requirements in moving to the municipal department. There's some questions on the direction that Rural Metro really wants to take. They've filed bankruptcy a number of times over the past, probably 15 years. I've been back with the department for almost ten years now, and in that time I've had four different chiefs as my boss. So that kind of shows you that there's not a lot of stability at that top level to who I respond to. On the flip side of that, I have not had that many people that's sitting in Angela's chair, who I look at as my boss for the town. I know Grady kind of thought he was my boss, but we really know who runs everything, right? So if you look at the flip side of that, in the time that I've been there, there's been two town managers, and one just recently retired. So I think, when you look as a whole, and from the private sector tumover at the top is not necessarily that good. If you look comparatively to fire departments around us, Scottsdale is on their third chief in 20 years. Rio Verde is on their third chief in 15 years. Fort McDowell is on their third chief in just about 15 years. Salt River is on their second chief in almost 20 years. So there's a little bit more stability on that. Hopefully, someone won't be standing up here saying, yeah, Fountain Hills has had four chiefs and were only in our fifth year so. Hopefully, everything works smooth. Like, I'd mentioned Dave Trimble, David Pock, myself, Rachael, Rob Durham, who's the procurement officer, will probably be joining us soon on the transition team. And we had a study by McGrath and Associates about the same time that we did the Page 6 of 24 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 7 of 24 APRIL 26, 2023, STRATEGIC PLANNING ADVISORY COMMISSION study for law enforcement. A little bit easier to bring us inhouse because, as I mentioned, we'd been part of -- the fire district had been a taxing authority for the town. The fire district owned all of the equipment. So at the time that the fire district was disbanded the town borrowed some money from the county, purchased all those assets. That's why we currently have the station and the equipment -- all the equipment on the fire trucks and that. So our transition is a little bit easier, although sometimes I have quite a few sleepless nights trying to make sure that I've got everything covered and that we're not spending an exorbitant amount of money to kind of equate the service that we've had before. So our budget was about $4.7 million, were still right in that range, going on the municipal opposed to the rural side. Part of that is that my town budget has always included the Rural fire contract in there. So that just kind of equates to staffing, manpower, some training issues -- or training items, and we'll kind of broaches that gap in there. So the difference is really not that great. We will have some startup costs because we'll have things that well need to purchase, like firefighter turnouts, wild and personal protective equipment, some of that items associated with dispatch. We're anticipating around a $500,000 price on the startup, that would be a one-time cost. I think that the benefit that we'll see from that over the next ten years will greatly outweigh what that cost is. So our goal is to not diminish any levels of service to the community. Grady was -- I want to say, wise enough to realize that the fire department is not Rural Metro. The fire department is the men and women that have served the community and the goal is to bring as many of those people forward that want to be part of Fountain Hills fire department. So it makes my job a little bit easier. I kind of laughed that Grady said, well, this is the time if you want to clean house you can do it. Hire somebody new and -- I know where all my challenges are. So hiring someone new, you don't know what that person's going to be. Everybody that we have up here is proud to serve Fountain Hills. We all have our little quirks, but when we all get together, were one good group of quirky people. I'm kind of looking forward to moving forward with the crews that are up here at this point. So like I said a number of your strategic priorities focused on public safety, not Page7of24 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 8 of 24 APRIL 26, 2023, STRATEGIC PLANNING ADVISORY COMMISSION specifically on the fire department. But as you look out -- as your goals -- and you had a ten-year plan in 2022, I think that our values and goals and how were moving forward really fit in with a number of your strategic priorities as well. If there's any specific questions, something I didn't cover, something you want to know, something you don't want to know, I'll be happy to highlight that. HOENLE: (Indiscernible). Oh, she is?KEEFE: You brought up the staff. Are you expecting any attrition risk from your current team or do you believe you'll retain everybody? OTT: We've got a possibility of -- all of my captains have 20 years and we kind of joke about this on the cop side and when Councilmember Spelich was up here. Apparently, if you're over 50 and a cop, you don't do that much at work. If you're over 50 and a fireman, you still work every day. You get on the truck every day. You pull hose every day. You go through those things in your career. If you're on a fire truck, doesn't change because of your age. So we have a -- of the six captains we have, all of them have at least 20 years and they probably range in age from, not that age is a issue, but 42 to almost 65. I think that well sec one of our oldest captains probably retire before the point that he comes over. Everybody else, and I kind of -- I have that line up here with a lot of experienced captains, then it goes down a little bit to that 15 to really, probably, 12 to 15 to 17 year range, my line goes down a little bit more. And now we've got the rest of the staff is like five years and under. So excited about the younger crew that we've got that with that attrition moving forward, that allows us to bring some of the younger people. We have people that have interest that are -- currently, we have a captain's position, a engineer's position, and firefighter positions and we have people that are firefighters that are aspiring to be engineers. Engineers that are aspiring to be captains. So as we move forward as the Fountain Hills Fire Department, I think we have enough people that we'll be able to move up -- forward, and then backfill those spots with younger, fresher firefighters, 1 guess. But I think, as a whole, I would say that at this point, were looking at almost 100 percent coming over. KEEFE: That's great. YAZZETTA: So I have two questions. One, what is your thought, and/or have we, or Page 8 of 24 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 9 of 24 APRIL 26, 2023, STRATEGIC PLANNING ADVISORY COMMISSION will we ever have volunteer help for the fire department, either from the paramedic or from the actual firefighting in certain area? As I honestly don't know if we've had that in the past in Fountain Hills. What's your thought about that? Is that something that you want to entertain or not? OTT: Well, Commissioner, there's days that 1 feel that 1 volunteer but that's just a personal thing. It's kind of a unique world and in the fire service, there's still 80 -- I think the numbers are 82 to 85 percent of the departments across the country are still volunteer and people seem amazed by that sometimes when you throw that number out. But if you travel across the country, and if you look at the incorporated areas opposed to the unincorporated areas, we still have a small amount of our country that has big metropolitan type areas. You almost always have paid departments in those areas. The volunteer side of it is still strong. There's some challenges for volunteer fire departments now, is trying to get people to participate and be part of that volunteer department. It's a little bit different than what it was 20 years ago or 30 years ago. We're having similar challenges on the paid side of things, but in smaller rural areas where it was your grandfather was on the volunteer fire department and your dad was on the volunteer fire department, your mom was on the volunteer fire department; it was kind of natural family progression to move up through there. There's still quite a number of fire chiefs that are 75, 80 years old in volunteer departments. I think that demographics and the makeup of the Valley where we're at and some of the changing, maybe attitudes, business -wise, make the volunteer -- going from paid to volunteer, make it pretty difficult. And if we look at the businesses in Fountain Hills, and a lot of them are -- I don't want to say short-staffed, but staffed to the core, are a lot of those businesses at a point where, if the alarm went off in the middle of the day that they could allow their employees to go out and participate in that. When you come from a rural area and a lot of those are farming or smaller, maybe, family run businesses, that it's acceptable to come in and see the sign on the door or you heard the siren and you know you can't go to the feedstore because nobody's going to be there because they're all responding to the fire, 1 think that's a way of life that would be difficult for us to get to. Moving more into the municipal side of things, I think, will open up more towards the possibility of having volunteers that could help as supplemental staff, but having trained Page 9 of 24 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 10 of 24 APRIL 26, 2023, STRATEGIC PLANNING ADVISORY COMMISSION volunteers on the truck is a little bit tougher. We do have almost 30 volunteers on the crisis response team that do respond to a variety of incidents, whether it's a sudden death for a family member, they'll come and kind of bridge the gap. The help the sheriffs out, as well as us. That allows the personnel that might be required to stay on scene with a family member until maybe a medical examiner gets there to really take possession of the body in a sudden death. Our crisis team is there to kind of help bridge that gap. They help the family at that point, contact other family members, contact the funeral home, give them options on what their next moves could be. Because even though we have a aging demographic here, a lot of people haven't really thought out, hey, what happens if I die? Then, if you're a little younger and that happens, you might be less apartment to have plans for that and a crisis team will help with that. They're also helping in situations where if you fall and you need help getting up, you can call us; night or day, any time. We'll come help you get back up. But that's not a great quality of life if you're calling three or four times a day or six/seven times a week. So well get the crisis team involved with that so that they can kind of bring out some options that people might not be aware of and get people the help that they might be paying for anyways or get them lined up with something that can help them so they have a little bit better quality of life than calling us every time they fall down. Not that we mind doing it, but again, it's not really the best thing for you as a person to have to have us come all the time. So that's really where we take that core volunteer group and put them to what we think is the best use. It's a little bit tougher in that transition and as the requirements are to be paramedic, it takes a little bit of continuing education. It's a little bit easier in this setting if you are in a paid department or you're being paid to do that or your employer's paying to do that. So the volunteer spirit is alive and well, and as you may or may not know, in Fountain Hills we boast -- I think we're still up around 800 volunteers. Which is huge for a community of 23,000 people. So anybody that wants to come out and pull hose and put some stuff on and do that, we're more than willing to have you come and -- KEEFE: Geoff said he does. YAZZETTA: Thank you. You know, that's great. A second one, very quick. This one will probably be easier. We had the superbloom, of Page 10 0124 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 11 of 24 APRIL 26, 2023, STRATEGIC PLANNING ADVISORY COMMISSION course. My backyard going out to Red Mountain. I've never seen it so yellow in my life. And at first you hear how wonderful it is. Second, then you read about the stinknet and a plant that's invasive and the concems about things dying and for fire, wild fires coming. Is that truly a concem? Is that -- I know we're always concerned but are you -- do you have highlighted -- or what's the word I'm looking for? More critical watch now because of that? Could that be a real issue for us in Fountain Hills? OTT: 1 think that any time you think that it's not a critical issue there's problems. I was here in '95 when we had the Rio Fire. And for those of you that might not know or are too young to know what that might have been, it was the biggest fire we had in the state at the time. Consumed 23,000 acres, I think. No structures were lost. But it took the desert out from -- it basically, started about 137th Street and Rio Verde Road and moved south for five days. It was the closest the town's come to having to evacuate due to a wildfire. The desert conditions at that point, 1 think -- that was a while -- well, 1 know 1 was a wildland guy then, but I think from probably '93 to '96, 1 was on some sort of a wildland fire. Probably once a week from April to October through that three or four year period. I think the desert conditions are about the same as they were then. Cave Creek experienced a large fire two years ago. We had a pretty good sized fire in McDowell Mountain Park. I can't remember now if that was two years ago, or -- but that was an interesting thing because it burned east to west and not north to south. If you saw some of the assets that were in the state and were available, the 747 dropping slurry out there; it's something you don't see very often. But because of previous fires we had and kind of the move to centrally locate some assets, they were available. The park is actually owned by the state, leased by the county. They came in and identified -- so the first time I've heard this, which was kind of cool in my aspect, is one of the assets they decided they needed to protect was Thomson Peak with the communication towers up there. Most public safety agencies have some sort of communications device up on Thompson Peak, it's in a great location. But they also said that our desert is our beach. If we're in California, that's where everybody would go. So they identified the desert out there as a high value target that they wanted to protect. I thought that was pretty cool. It's the first time I've heard that in 37 years. Page 11 of 24 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 12 of 24 APRIL 26, 2023, STRATEGIC PLANNING ADVISORY COMMISSION So with invasive species, they're always tough. They're tough to kill. Salt River and Fort McDowell, out along the river, they have saltcedar embedded in there. Saltcedar's a very -- I want to say dangerous invasive species because it takes out some of the other natural grasses there. But one thing to keep in mind is that when you take a look and you've got everything in bloom out there, most of that is low-lying -- we call it flash fuels, because it's lower; it's lower to the ground. It will go quick. The problem you have is when you start getting medium and ladder fuels like your creosote bushes, smaller palo verdes, smaller mesquite trees. Some of those things that end up growing and touching down to the ground, now that flash fuel has someplace to go. If you look out and you just got a field of pretty flowers now and your allergies are going nuts, in the event of a fire, that would probably move very quickly across it. Not that those aren't dangerous too. A lot of the fires that we see in Oklahoma, Nebraska, and across the prairies are field fires that will go for miles, because there's nothing to stop it. But there's really nothing more in there to be consumed, because there's the low-lying stuff, the flash fuels, are going to bum until they get to a higher fuel source. Once that happens, you go from the desert fires that have flash fuels, medium fuels, very few medium to heavy fuels, opposed to going to Flagstaff, where you've got the whole gamut. You've got flash fuels, medium fuels. Most of your medium fuels are all ladder fuels, ladder fuels go to the heavy fuels which are your bigger trees. And then you end up with the worst case scenario, which would be a crown fire, which is the fire all the way in the top of the trees and it just keeps going. They're very hard to fight and control and contain. We're a little bit luckier here from that aspect. We just have to deal with the high heat from the normal temperatures and a little bit of terrain. We've had a couple of fires up in Eagle's Nest. Again, the terrain there is a little bit trickier, but the way the houses are built and for the most part, the way that Fountain Hills is laid out, we've got washes. And as long as your homes arc clear from the washback and you've got some protectable space, well have a fire that will run through the wash but the chance it's going to extend out to a residence or something, some other structure, is greatly limited. So what we train here is that we do -- in a wildland world there's wildland firefighters and structure firefighters. And a wildland firefighter, if a Page 12 of 24 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 13 of 24 APRIL 26, 2023, STRATEGIC PLANNING ADVISORY COMMISSION structure or a house is a third of the way involved, they move on because they're not geared or equipped to do that. So the suppression side of -- the structure protection side of that crew that might be deployed in there, they'll take that house that's on fire and do that. They won't do anything with the grass that's moving towards the next house or medium sized fuels that are around the next house. They'll concentrate on that structure. And way back when we used to do a red rock, green rock, and you'd look at a house and you'd say, okay, this house has got a well defensible space around it, they get a green rock. This house has got a lot of wood piled up by it and broken down porch and a lot of things, that gets a red rock. So in the middle of the night when you're out there and you're looking, you go, okay, green rock we can go to the next house. And the red rock, you're going to do what you can to protect it from getting to the green rock house. But it's always a concem and we kind of joke in firefighter humor that this is the worst fire season we've ever seen. Unless you look at last year or the year before that or the next coming year, but we'll always take it seriously and look at it and do what we can. We work well with Justin as well, on his wash maintenance and there's times that well come in and say, hey, if you've got a little bit of time for your crew, can they clear this path so that we've got more or a roadway going into it? We did just recently update and replace a pump on one of our brush trucks that was probably midpoint fire district equipment. And we had taken care of it and nursed it along and got it to the point where it was ready for it to retire, so we were able to purchase a new pump which, as you know, everything gets really high-tech and moves forward. And the pump that we bought was a replacement skid. You pull the old pump out, slid that new pump right in the bed in of that F550, and it is my kind of pump, because it's got nothing electronic on it. It says, "more foam, less foam". So we finally got back to something that was a little bit simpler and it's got a hose reel on it. And our guys kind of train with that in mind that, hey, we've got it setup that almost all of our stuff we can fight being on asphalt. They might have potholes in it, but were still on the asphalt. And we've got hydrants around town. We've got the ability where we can just lay a hose line. We got unmanned monitors. You can set that monitor down, tied to a fire hydrant that's probably pretty close to where we need to go. Leave that and go do something else, come back and take care of that. So when they laid out the town, if Page 13 of 24 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 14 of 24 APRIL 26, 2023, STRATEGIC PLANNING ADVISORY COMMISSION you look at most of the building requirements that were put in, we don't have a lot of shingle roofs, we don't have cedar shake houses for the most part. A lot of it is tiled roof, flat roof, which has got some sort of a fire resistance to it, and stucco houses. In a firefighting world, on the wildland side, that's as good as it gets. YAZZETTA: Thank you. OTT: Yep. MAGAZINE: I have two questions. The first is, would you describe again, in a little more detail, the emergency system when someone calls 911 when it's been through Rural Metro? It's changing isn't it? And did you say it's a group in Mesa that will handle it now? OTT: Yes, ma'am. The way that it currently works, and this is pretty similar to almost anywhere you go in the country. At one point, there were two 911 centers. One was in Denver and one was somewhere in the east; I don't know. Past -- east of the Mississippi, so it didn't really matter out here. But 911 would go to one local center and then that center broke that out to the local areas. As things progressed, most of the 911 centers across the country are kind of run by the police agencies, and that's by design because you want to get the cops there first, right? So the 911 call would go to the police agency and then it would get dispatched to the fire department. Here it goes to Maricopa County sheriffs. They ask if it's a police, medical, or fire emergency. They may keep part of the call, based on what you tell them, but then they're going to transfer that call over to a fire agency dispatch center. Currently, it goes to Rural Metro, which is -- they've got a call center that they also run their ambulance business out of over in Glendale. If you were in Scottsdale and called 911, you're going to go to the Scottsdale police department. Scottsdale police department is going to transfer that to Phoenix Fire, which is the regional dispatch for -- if we split the valley in the 101 going east and west, things on -- for the most part, things on the westside of the 101 end up going to Phoenix. So Phoenix dispatch would dispatch Scottsdale fire. What will happen for us is -- and that gets a little tricky because there are parts of Fountain Hills that are actually Scottsdale, right? But because of the way that the borders are, that call -- you've got one in three chance it can go to Scottsdale, it can go to Maricopa County sheriff's, or if you're around this end, it might get picked up by Fort Page 14 of 24 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 15 of 24 APRIL 26, 2023, STRATEGIC PLANNING ADVISORY COMMISSION McDowell. And that first call taker group, whichever that happens to be on the police side of it, they'll get that information out and then send it over to the appropriate fire department. What will happen for us in January, is that that call won't get transferred to Rural Metro, it will get transferred to Mesa. We're on the east side of the 101, so we're being dispatched by the Mesa Regional Dispatch Center, and there would be no -- you, as a caller, would not know any difference. For us, and this is not a slam on Rural Metro, were a fire department that's being dispatched by a ambulance company, and in my world, there's a little bit of difference for that. It doesn't have as high of a priority on some things. Our communication side of things has degragated (sic) over the years and even now -- more so now that were going municipal. They're not going to do anything to fix it for the next eight months. So our guys are -- at some point, in a little bit of jeopardy because of the communication system is not very good. But that's on our side, that's not on the call side. So you're placing the call, you would think everything's great. That's once that call taker transfers it to a dispatcher and that dispatcher starts talking to us, that's where we have the problems. But going to Mesa, that will clean up all of those issues. Mesa's got a little bit more robust system. It's a fire department, dispatching fire departments and ambulance companies, opposed to the other way around. So that's another thing that we're excited about is that we're going to get kind of, in our world, more of state of the art dispatch center. Well have computer -aided dispatch. They'll be able to tell where each unit is. Somewhere down the road, we might look at applying for automatic aid, which is a regional system which dispatches the closest unit -- closest available unit, and that will cut down the response times. That's something that were looking forward in the future, but we've got the key pieces of the municipal department that we need to put in place first, before we start looking at what well do. We'll have a solid mutual aid agreement which is a little bit different. We have to ask for that closest unit or additional units. In the automatic aid system, its all — they can tell on the computer screen. They'll say, okay, this truck from Scottsdale's closer to Fry's, than what our engine at station 2 is. They would automatically dispatch that. If we know that we're having problems, right now, we would go back to our dispatchers and say hey, can -- okay, in the future, when Page 15 of 24 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 166124 APRIL 26, 2023, STRATEGIC PLANNING ADVISORY COMMISSION we're dispatched by Mesa, we would go to that dispatcher and say, hey, we can't get there, is there a closer Scottsdale unit? And they would say, yep, we see them right here. Well push that button, and it's done. MAGAZINE: Let me give you just a brief example. There was an incident at Bashas' grocery store about eight months ago. OTT: I think I'm aware of it. MAGAZINE: And friends called 911 and it took 10 to 15 minutes to get there and they wanted to know the address of Bashas'. And the people calling said there's only one Bashas' in Fountain Hills. They insisted we need to know the address. Will that go away with this new system? OTT: I will say that on the -- again, the first call taker might have been a Maricopa County sheriffs call taker, okay. They're in Phoenix, in the basement of a building on Jefferson Street, I think. They might have moved them out of the basement, but they're here. And the things that 1 hear when people ask about, well, we called and this is what happened. I got to kind of take that with where were at, who's -- what all the pieces are. So for someone to get the call and say it's the only Bashas' in Fountain Hills, that call taker might not even know where Fountain Hills is other than, okay, it's a blob over here. Okay, so as the call taker, I've got to figure that out, figure out how I can get there. If 1 have the address and almost every call taker, you watch any murder mystery show, any cop show on TV, that's usually in the first couple of sentences, what's the location of your emergency? What is your address? So that they can get the closest, most appropriate unit going. In that time frame -- that takes time to get that information. It doesn't meant that they're not working on it. I think -- I'm not a big TV show guy, but 911, I think is a kind of good example of how that call taker takes that call and they're working on a lot of stuff as they're taking that information. But gathering that information is going to take time and as that comes in -- and then, another thing that happens is people say, well, I got put on hold. We had a vehicle fire down by Little Fountains a number of years ago, and there were a lot of people that -- it was during the middle of the day. Everybody's calling and then people were calling us saying, hey, there's a problem with the system, we got put on hold, we didn't know. But you could have been the I0th persons calling about that. Page 16 of 24 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 17 of 24 APRIL 26, 2023, STRATEGIC PLANNING ADVISORY COMMISSION They've already got that. They've answered the phone, they just put you on hold. But in some instances, they might be able to tell by your cell phone location where you're at; that's not always 100 percent true for the location. So you might have said we're in Fountain Hills, and at that point they might have been working on dispatching the appropriate units but not having the address. I mean, if they -- this is the beautiful thing about where we live. We have enough people that lived or still live in areas where you call the fire station and say, hey, I've got a problem. And if you called the fire station and said, hey, we've got a -- we need help at Bashas', our guys are going to be out the door, knowing exactly where to go. The problem with calling the fire station is that if nobody's there or I'm in my office and nobody else is there, and 1 got to get up to go to the kitchen, you're going to hang up by the time I get to the phone in the kitchen and -- But those are some of the things and -- that's an exaggeration of what happens on the 911 side of things, but that truly does happen and it's not as immediate as everybody thinks or everybody wishes. And the time compression factor. I know that when I've been first on the scene, something's happened in front of me, I'm on the radio. I'm not going through 911. I'm going directly to an operator. I will tell you that it takes 20 minutes for our guys to get there, when I know that they're right down the street in a station 3 minutes away. And then I have to calm myself down a little bit, and go, all right, you remember how to do this. But also they're going to be here in a minute. My mind is saying it's taking a long time. And truly I've been on -- I had people call and say hey, we did it. We pulled the car records and there's something in there, things happened. Like, okay, it's a new call taker, or it's a new dispatcher, or this, or somebody's training, or they were short staffed and that's one of the problems that we run into now. 1 know the sheriffs department dispatcher's short staffed. Our area's short staffed. Both Phoenix and Mesa dispatch centers seem to be thoroughly staffed and well trained, so those things don't happen as often, but you're still going to have that. It's part of the mechanical type system, and the one thing with mechanical systems is that there's always some sort of failure in there. But we hope that that's not the case. And anytime you have a question on how long it took or what the call was, I can get that information now. I'll be able to Page 17 of 24 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 18 of 24 APRIL 26, 2023, STRATEGIC PLANNING ADVISORY COMMISSION get that information in the future too and look at it. And we've had problems over the years where we've been able to identify those issues and get them corrected and then you get a change in management, and you've got to start all over again. MAGAZINE: 1 have a different question. OTT: Okay. MAGAZINE. Is every fireperson an EMT? Are they all required to do -- to learn to do cases of cardiac arrest and so on? OTT: Dave, do you want to answer that? We had this conversation the other day as we were working towards the budget and we're looking at personnel and that. Yes. And I'm going to say for the most part, there's a little bit difference there between some volunteer departments too, as we talked about. Some of the training is a little bit different there. But for us in the valley, every firefighter in the valley is going to be at least an EMT basic, which would be a BLS firefighter. Everybody on an ambulance, whether they are civilian or a firefighter, minimum level on that is going to be an EMT-B. They're all trained in basic life support. Then in the fire service, and if you're a young person or knows someone that wants to get into the fire service, if they go through a community college, get a firefighter 1 and 2, get their EMT, and then continue on and become a paramedic, they can do all that before they're 21. They can walk out of a community college with all of those certificates and pretty much go anywhere in the country that they want to work, because paramedics are -- we're hitting a shortage of them. And part of it is that you get a lot of guys that -- or a lot of personnel that are retiring, but also the demand is greater. Back 30 years ago, you didn't always have a paramedic on a fire truck. In the valley, it kind of became a standard that you have at least one. And now, you have at least two, because that one might have been the captain, but the captain's responsible for the overall scene safety, the safety of his personnel, the safety of the public there. And if that's the only paramedic that can administer drugs during a cardiac arrest, he can't effectively do his job. So a lot of people will have that paramedic as a captain on the truck and then another paramedic that's there. And we have a saying that paramedics save lives, but EMTs save paramedics. So you always want to -- and I never became a paramedic. 1 was always one of those Page 18 of 24 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 19 of 20 APRIL 26, 2023, STRATEGIC PLANNING ADVISORY COMMISSION EMTs that were there that -- I worked with enough paramedics that when things were a little loose around regulations, you were doing things that you -- probably, today would get you in trouble doing. But you worked well enough that you knew what that next step was going to be. So CPRs changed a little bit in the world of things. We do a lot more compressions, push a lot more drugs. But that paramedic, we have two on every one of our trucks. So the staffing that we currently have up here is per the contract with Rural, we have eight personnel on the firetrucks. We have two on an ambulance. But of those eight on the firetrucks, five of them are paramedics. So our odds of getting the paramedic right there the first time is pretty good. We've had some staffing issues with Rural on some of the ambulance things, but again that's kind of a separate thing. But people will say why do I have a firetruck at my house? You're getting a firetruck because that paramedic's on that truck. If you had to wait for the paramedic to show up on the ambulance, there are a whole lot more firetrucks than there are ambulances. So you might be waiting in that first critical part and that's why we kind of push bystander CPR or public CPR. We also have public access defibrillator program in town that's been used a couple of times, but those are valuable times that it's been used. But that time gap is crucial. So for us, the best level of service we can give you is getting a paramedic there as soon as we can. HOENLE: Jill, do you have something? KEEFE: I do, but 1 think Geoff does. YAZZETTA: Oh, do you have something else? KEEFE: You go ahead. YAZZETTA: Okay. Thanks, Chief. Two quick questions. The community response team, is that the same as a CERT team? OTT: It's a little bit different. CERT has a different level of training and they do different types of emergency response. They would be more along the line of a disaster response. The crisis team is volunteers that -- we have them dispatched as part of our major incident response. So if we have house fire, we'll generally call the crisis team to come in and if they can assist the homeowner with if they need arrangements. They've got relationships with the hotels in town. And were working on a better system of this, Page 19 of 20 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 20 of 24 APRIL 26, 2023, STRATEGIC PLANNING ADVISORY COMMISSION of having pre -paid Visa cards and things for them, so that they can go out, either get food if somebody needs, get them into a hotel if they need that. Kind of bridging the gap between what's needed immediately and where Red Cross come in and provide some services. Not everybody will utilize the Red Cross system, which is there and it's a great system. We would put our crisis team in, what we would call, occupant resources, basically, in our overall structure. So we would let them deal with the homeowners. That might be helping them gather up their pets, getting them somewhere if they need to go to a pet shelter for the night until they can get things done. They'll coordinate with us and say, okay, they've got medication in the bathroom closet. Can we get to a point where we can get in there and get a cell phone for them, get some medication? The crisis team will do those types of things on that type of an event. We've used them quite a bit with -- even though they're not counselors, we use them kind of in a, maybe a counseling mode. And if we've got people that are in crisis, they're big with getting people hooked up at Reigning Grace Ranch, which is a huge local program for us. It's not in town but it's local for us. Great resource for youths that are at risk. Also adults that are having some issues, that's kind of a good outlet for them as well. They'll, as I mentioned earlier, if there's a sudden death instance, they'll stay with the family. Kind of help the family get going down the road that will benefit them. There they do -- man, I don't know. It's just such a great group of people, I can't keep track of everything they do. And we're kind of responsible for them. They work under me in my structure. But I also include them in my town budget. So when they need uniforms and the shirts that identify them and the jackets and the hats and the things that they need because they might get called out in the middle of the night. That comes out of our budget and we're happy to do that and happy to take care of them. We give them a place to meet, we help them with training where we can and they seek out their own training and pretty much make that happen. But I couldn't do what we do without them. YAZZETTA: Sure. Thanks for clarifying. And then is there a CERT team locally? And if not, is there any plans to put one together? OTT: We currently do not have a CERT team but if you're wanting to take that on, we'd be more than happy -- Page 20 of 20 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 21 of 24 APRIL 26, 2023, STRATEGIC PLANNING ADVISORY COMMISSION YAZZETTA• It would be a good leadership academy project. OTT: It is beneficial. YAZZETTA: Yeah. OTT: One of the things -- and it's kind of along the lines of with the crisis team. We have a little bit of a turnover in there but have no shortage of people coming back that want to be involved. But sometimes there's not enough to keep them busy. And a lot of CERT teams in smaller areas, they kind of have that same issue with there's not enough to keep them busy. Being the emergency manager for the town, with the exception of COVID, that's one of the easier jobs I've ever had. We don't have a lot of emergencies here. The training -- and if they keep up on the training, that's kind of one aspect of it. There is a little bit of CERT to CERT, where if another municipality has a CERT team and they needed some help, they might be able to do a regional callout. But I've utilized CERT teams in -- we help with firefighter funerals. And we've used CERT teams in the past because they usually have a lot of radios that are on different frequencies. They've got people that can kind of help with some of the logistical type things. So the CERT's a valuable project -- YAZZETTA: Sure. OTT: -- and it's something that on the rural side of things, would have been a little bit harder to establish. Could have been a town established thing, and as we move forward with the municipal department, we can definitely take a look at that. If there's enough interest, we'll be more than happy to do that. There's cost involved with it, but there's also grants that will help with that process and equipment and things. You know, everything's got an expiration date on it, so you stock a trailerful of stuff -- YAZZETTA: Yeah. OTT: -- and you end up throwing it out because it never gets used. YAZZETTA: Thanks, Chief. OTT: You're good? KEEFE: This strategic planning committee will be taking on updating the town strategic plan in 2024 and knowing that, I'd like your opinion on are there any key topics that you think we should be aware of and focused on for updating the plan? Page 21 of 24 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 22 of 24 APRIL 26, 2023, STRATEGIC PLANNING ADVISORY COMMISSION OTT: I think that -- HOENLE: We don't mean to put you on the spot. OTT: Well, I was trying think how I could shuffle this over to Larry. HOENLE: I mean, we'll definitely be getting back to you but if you had something on the top of your head? OTT: Yeah. You know, I think the plan's great and we review it frequently on the town director side of things. I'm always happy when I looked and I don't have a line there. But we would be more than happy to participate in it. And I think that as we move forward I'll take a look at that and see what I think that more line item detail than just the bald priority on there. But we always -- well, we'll always back up everybody else's priority on there if they need help in trying to achieve that. So were well with community services, developmental services, even public works; we work well with them as well. But we're always happy to be a part of it. KEEFE: Thanks, Chief. HOENLE: Okay. We've kept you on your feet long enough on this one. But appreciate the conversation and not a question but a big shoutout. I really appreciate your services and we used them about two weeks ago when we were cleaning up around a building too. That snake removal, I mean, on the spot; it was a very big diamond back. But that's something that a lot of people sort of take for granted. Our fire department, they're going to show up and yeah, maybe they just put them over the wall or take them down at the end of the cul de sac. But that's part of living out here. So thank you. OTT: You're welcome. We're always glad to do it. And also, in 30-plus years, that's been a big transition for us, where there was open space you could take a snake. But snakes are kind of territorial and they tend to find their way back to where you moved them from. 1 don't know what the farthest distance a snake has gone but we had gone kind of the whole gamut. We'd be able to take them out to a wash that didn't have a house behind it to -- we collected them. There was a student at ASU that was milking snakes. So wed collect them, he'd come, take the snakes, milk them for antivcnom; that kind of went away. At one point we were allowed to -- or there was not really an issue if you kind of dispatched the snake. They're a little bit more protected now. And again, it was nothing that we really took any satisfaction out of. It was just at some point, what Page 22 of 24 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 23 of 24 APRIL 26, 2023, STRATEGIC PLANNING ADVISORY COMMISSION are you going to do with them, because you can't take them anywhere. So now a lot of people are a little disheartened that we're not taking it farther away, but Rural at one point, had moved towards, unless the snake was keeping you from getting in or out of your house, or in your house, they weren't going to dispatch us. And I came back and told them, you know, as long as I'm up here, it doesn't matter where the snake's at, call us. Because I don't want somebody that doesn't like snakes to feel threatened by the snake even though it's not keeping you from leaving your house or whatever. And a lot of times, now, this time of year, they're not going to be there. We'll get called and by the time we get there, they've already moved off. But they're moving a little bit faster now. They're looking for food and water and either hot or cold place. But we're more than happy to come help move them. And when McGrath did the fire service study -- they're from Chicago. And we're talking about snake removals and I had to explain to them what that actually meant. Because the department that he workcd in and worked around, they never had a snake call. But I'm just glad that they're smaller in nature for the most part. And I had read an article on a department in Thailand and they're going after anacondas and big snakes. I don't like little snakes, but I'll go help you get rid of your snake. And we're always glad to help. If you've got a project that you need done, always happy to be part of that. HOENLE: Thank you, Chief. Did you have another one? KEEFE: No. HOENLE: Thank you very much. OTT: You're welcome. And my door's always open in my office, so if you ever want to stop by. I'll get back with you on the project. If you want more information on CERT, I can dig that up. I've got a few friends that have started CERT programs. YAZZETTA: (Indiscernible) a few years ago, but a great program. OTT: Yeah. Very good program. YAZZETTA: Thank you. OTT: All right. Enjoy your afternoon. HOENLE: Okay. Moving onto next topic. There was a note that came out from Patrick. Hopefully, you've seen it. Talking about the next meeting well have an update from the Page 23 of 24 TOWN OF FOUNTAIN HILLS Page 24 of 24 APRIL 26, 2023, STRATEGIC PLANNING ADVISORY COMMISSION town on the status of the strategic plan and metrics that they're using. And then, well also be in the throes of determining our commission leadership. So you'll be thinking about that. I'm sure Patrick's going to have some comments and talk about it before the meeting. And then talking with Angela before this meeting, we have three potential vacancies. We have some people that are on here that want to renew. We had another vacancy with Mary leaving. And that will be announced on the 2nd, at the council meeting. So we'll be full up again. And then, the next meeting will be coming up on the 24th of May. And any other questions, comments, business, afterthoughts? Do I hear a motion? MAGAZINE. 1 move we adjourn? HOENLE: Second. KEEFE: I second. HOENLE: All in favor? ALL- Aye. Page 24 of 24