with my large town council committee. I'm going to call the meeting in order 6:30 and I'm going to introduce this is a special meeting of the public safety committee to discuss the study. U at this time I'll turn it over to public
safety director Chris Longo to introduce Paul Bishop. >> Hi, thanks everybody for coming out tonight. It was a really good turnout. For those of you who don't know me, my name is Chris Longo. I'm the public safety director and the municipal uh deputy municipal manager. So, thank you all for coming out here. The reason that
we called this meeting tonight was to give you a little bit of an idea of before we start this study, really get into it, give you a little bit of an idea of what the process is going to be, the timeline, the scope of the study, so we're all on the same page. So, when the stud is done, we don't have any
surprises. Everybody's kind of along the same line. And we'll be doing some updates. Um, you know, I'm I'm managing this project uh in for the township. So, uh, you'll see me uh interacting with Mr. Bishop here. Uh, and I will keep you
up to date as we get some meaningful information. So, this is something that I want to do in partnership with the community um, you know, as we develop and as Paul develops uh, the the study information. So, if you have any questions going forward, you know, feel
free to reach out to me at any time. My information is out on the uh the township website. Uh if you need to get in touch with Paul, I'm sure he'll give you his information. Um the way it's going to go is Paul's going to go through his presentation tonight. After his presentation, we'll have time for
some public comment and if you have any questions, you have some input. We ask we're not going to limit you on time, but just be respectful of everybody's time. Um we're very early in this process. it really hasn't started very preliminarily. Uh Paul's getting into some of the data, but we'll go into
that. We're we're not to the point tonight where you're going to get recommendations or anything. I don't think that Paul has the information yet to do that. So, um again, thank you all for coming. Paul Bishop from CGR and uh Paul.
>> All right. Thank you. Um you guys good with the audio? >> Okay. Um I have stay over here so I can navigate the computer. you'll you'll see why in a few minutes. Um, and I appreciate the opportunity to be here tonight and all of your time and attention to be here. So, a little bit
about CGR. Uh, CGR is a private nonprofit consulting firm. We're headquartered in Rochester, New York. We've been working with communities for 110 years. Uh, we do our work across the Northeast. We have some experience uh
locally. We uh a few years ago uh now a little bit over a decade uh Princeton, New Jersey went from being a burrow and a township into one big municipality. We were uh integral in that study helping them get to the finish line helping that vote happen. Uh we've also done a number
of fire studies uh in in the state of New Jersey as well as across the um across the northeast. So, you know, I have experience working with fire departments, working with ambulance agencies. Uh, personally, I've been working as a as a local government and
public safety consultant for the last 14 years. I've been a paramedic for 30 years, and I continue to do that uh for the town where I live, although being a paramedic is now part-time as this is my full-time job. What we're going to do tonight is uh
give a little bit of an introduction of our study process, give you an update of of where we are in it, which is as noted pretty early on, but we do have some things that we'll be able to share tonight. Um and then we'll be happy to to participate in discussion as it goes on.
So, here's our project team. Um I'm the director. I have been here I was here once already in January. I've been here for the last two days. Um, but as I said, I'm not a a firefighter. I don't have that layer of expertise. So, uh, as a part of our team, uh, I have Jim
Harrington, who's a retired, uh, fire chief. He was the, uh, first fire chief, first career fire chief in a combination department outside of Rochester, New York in the town of Gates. um had about 60 fire full-time firefighters on the
force when he retired, as well as about uh 30 or so volunteers at that point, but that's a a pretty uh bustling suburban community outside of Rochester before he was the fire chief there. He also worked for the insurance services
organization which is the uh the organization that does studies on communities across the country uh to to gauge and provide objective assessment about how their fire departments operate. Um I've got a colleague who helps me on the EMS side particularly
when it comes to some operation things. Um name is Jim Cassen. Um, I throw research questions at him and he helps me go through that. Then we've got our kind of our general research team, Kieran Bazilla. Those of you who are are
part of the fire service who I haven't interviewed with or we might do some other focus groups. He will be involved in that. Um, as well as Alina Santiago helps me in those areas. And then Kate Bell is our our GIS specialist and we'll see some of her work um in a little bit
when we uh we talk about the mapping and kind of the distribution of calls and then how to get around this town. So that's our our project team and this is you know our approach to to the engagement. What we first thing that we need to do is we need to understand how
things operate here today. So we do what we we refer to as our baseline segment of the study and that's where we are right now. That's the meat of the factf finding where I requested information gathered a lot of information about calls for service about the vehicles you
use about your stations about the number of people you have what their credentials are what their training is. So it's a whole bunch of objective information that we gather. We make sense of it. We distill it down. We find the kind of the key themes and at the end of that we report it back in what we
refer to as the baseline report. Now that baseline report isn't always made public not because there's anything secret in it but because it's just a foundation. We want to share it back with the experts though in the field to make sure we've got those facts right to make sure that we didn't miss something.
Because sometimes we do we ask question we think it's the right question they answer that question and we realize we forgot some part of it. We've already discovered that with some of the EMS data. We asked the question one way and then we realized we're missing one segment of calls in the way I asked the
question. So, we were going back and forth today about how do I fill in that gap to make sure we're getting the full picture about EMS in the town. Once we do that, we get that baseline and then we start talking about what are the options or the opportunities or the potential changes that you can make.
What do you need to do to to improve the service to ensure that you are getting the best service for the best value you can in your community? If you had an unlimited budget, I would build you the perfect EMS and fire stations and operate and you would have ideal
service, but you don't have an unlimited budget. So, we've got to balance the cost with how do we get the best service for the value that you want to provide in the community. So, we have to have those kind of political discussions and the the rules about how much you can raise your taxes and what you can do
with your different funds. So, we have those conversations as we're outlining the options. And again, we go back and forth with a with the the elected officials with uh Chris and and the other the leaders of the the departments and we get uh the feedback and we say,
"All right, we're good." Then we get to the final report and that's the next time you'll likely see me. um we'll be back and we'll be doing a a final presentation where we'll be saying this was our baseline. We'll hit some of those highlights. So I won't go through the whole 150 page report which is what
it'll be. Um but we'll go through the important parts and then we'll also get into those recommendations, those suggestions, try and prioritize them. These are the things you should try and do right away. These are the things you need to think about for five ten years
down the road because they're trends that you're facing and you need to address them. So what are our key tasks? Project initiation. We've already done that. Hit that check box. We had some online meetings. Then I was down here um
for a visit where I first time I was here I met with the chiefs of the different services. Uh did some initial walkthroughs. Now we're in this baseline review. The last uh 24 36 hours I've been interviewing the leaders of the
department, people who are on shift, members, staff. I got a chance to meet with this time last night, I was in a room with about 40 volunteer firefighters. I met with the uh the volunteer chief officers. Um and then
this morning, I met with the the paid staff on the fire side, and I've met with about uh a third of the EMS staff. Um, unfortunately some of them are out sick, so I didn't get to meet with them in person, but we'll figure out a way to get their input. Um, walked through all
of the facilities, been through every building, every little nook and cranny. I don't think I got into all the closets and addicts, but it was pretty close. We gathered the data about how things operate. So, it's a we start with a big data request, and that was answered
really in a very timely manner. Uh, we've got it. We're going through it. We're taking a look at your inventory, figuring out how old your trucks are, how, you know, what the capacities are, going through all that information, distilling it down. We're analyzing the calls for service.
Um, so we pulled the last three years worth of data. Uh, we've done some initial stuff that I'll share with you about where your calls are. Um, but we haven't gone through about the when and the what type and who's responding yet. That takes a little bit for us to chew through on our on our data analysis.
So that is our baseline report. We're on on time for that. I'll show you the timeline in the next slide. And then from that we get into talking about the action plan. This project has got about six key questions that we're being asked to answer. One of them is about location
of fire stations. Are they in the right spot? That's one that we've been asked to to tackle pretty early on. Another is about the staffing of the career firefighters. Are they in the right time zone? Should they be working some other
shift? That is another question that we're being asked to answer early before we get to the final report. So, we're going to have some kind of interm findings that we'll be sharing. Um, and then we'll be talking about capital needs and how to collaborate between the different workforces that you have, your
volunteer and your career. and then taking a look at the future, what's going on 5 10 years down the road. We will then come back and present the report and we're thinking it's going to take about 180 days. So, here's where we are. This is our
timeline. And from the back of the room, it might be a little hard to see, but I Whoops. Advance too far. Um, starting off that project kickoff, we started in January. That's done. the data gathering and site visit. That's that second row
and happening in February. Where are we? It's February 18th. Here I am. We're almost done with that fact dining gathering. We've gotten most of the information. We're finding there's certain stuff we have to get follow-up questions with. So, that's going on. And
as we get into March and April, we'll be developing that baseline report um and making an interimm finding. And then from there we get into our options development. We're thinking about that right now. We're already like, "Oh, okay. You know, this is something we
have to consider. This is what's unique about Lawrence that we need to take into into account as we're coming up with our plan. You've got this big mall out on the east side. You've got a university in the middle. You've got this private school somewhere in the north central part. So all of this stuff own a couple
of little roads that run through town that we have to take into consideration as we're making these these recommendations and then come May and June we get into the different um discussions of of the final thing. So that's our outline as it is right now.
Things change. Like I said we're being asked to answer some questions early and we're we're doing our best to accommodate that. um that might then slow us down on getting the whole final report done because we had to do some stuff early. But we'll see how that plays out. We'll stay in touch with
Chris um and keep things up to date. I need to pause and take a breath. All right. So, what have I learned so far? I typed these slides up at about 5:15. Your fire service,
your career staff operates 8:00 am to 4 pm Monday through Friday from the Lawrenceville and Slackwood stations. They don't work on holidays and it's a different different schedule. You know, it's a different kind of force when the volunteers are here, but you're
working with I got the number right 13 career firefighters. Um they work off of three different apparatus during that time. The volunteer staff covers the remaining hours and they work solely out of that Lawrence Road station. So they work out of a single station with their
apparatus that they respond to. You've got about 1360 calls per year. This is taking a look at the last three years. The three years were all pretty close to that. So what does that equate to? A little over three and a half calls per day on average.
Some days you get 11 or 12 calls. Some days they're playing peuckle all day long. Well, really, they're not. But, um, you know, some days are are less exciting for the firefighters than others. Regardless, as I've been meeting people over the last day and a half, you have
some dedicated staff, both career and volunteer. They are working to make their ability to perform this job, and it's a difficult job these days, making it better. They're trying to get the right training. They want to make sure they have the right equipment. These
people are have their hearts in the right place and they're getting pretty good support from the town. One thing that I noticed though, there's really limited interaction between the career staff and the volunteers. Um, and that's an early observation that I don't think any of the folks in the room who I've
met with are going to disagree with that. And that's one of the findings that I know is going to be there is we need to make sure we we get that that a little bit tighter relationship between the two groups. On the EMS side, they're operating out of one facility. It's their own
facility. Um it's behind the Lawrence Road Fire Station there. They operate either one or two ambulances with EMTs on daytime shift. And it's one or two because they work two different platoon during the day. One platoon has two has
enough staff for two ambulances. One platoon has enough staff for one. Um the call volume remains the same whichever one's on duty. They're usually able to cover it with the one and a half. Uh but sometimes mutual aid gets called in town. The overnight ambulance ship is
only got one crew on duty. You have very experienced EMTs. I asking them how long have you been doing this? Well, they might only be full-time here for four, five, six years. That's a lot of calls they're seeing in that time, but most of them have been EMTs for a decade or
longer. Um, so you have real experienced staff on the EMT side. That call volume has been going up every year. Um, up about four or five uh% one year over the next. So in 2025, they were doing almost
12 calls per day um on average. And again, they have their spikes and they have their lower parts. The one caveat, these are the calls that they responded to and that's one of the gaps we discovered in our data today. I don't know the calls that they had to turn over to somebody else. So, we've got to
add that to the total and we will by the time the report is finalized. They're also helping their neighbors. I'll show you the map of where they respond to in a few minutes. Um, and you'll see that they respond out of town on a regular basis and they're really living into the term mutual aid. And that's a phrase.
It's got two words that both have to do work. Mutual and aid. you're giving it to somebody, you also get it from somebody. And on the EMS side, it seems to be a a good good distribution there. So, here's the call volume. That's too small for you guys. You're not going to
be able to see that, but that's the kind of thing that we're doing. So, I am now going to go a little interactive. So, bear with me as I switch programs and hope that everything's operating. edit it,
but we don't want all that. >> See how quick the internet works for me. >> All right. We'll zoom in as best we can. So, for as you're keeping track, this is the township of Lawrence. Now, we use interactive mapping and we share this um
Chris already has access to this map and as the report finishes, we will make sure that it is a publicly available map. Um because we want you to understand what's going on. And mapping these days, the programs are sophisticated, but they get really busy really quick. And if you don't have the
ability to zoom in and turn things on and off the way you want to, it's hard for you to follow the story. But I'm going to start with the first chapter of the story is we want to be able to highlight where are your stations. So that's what we've done here on this map.
I've got your three locations. Uh the Lawrenceville station, the Lawrence Road station, the Slackwood station. We've got the weird border of the town of Lawrence. We won't go into how borders were created in this country. They don't make
a lot of logical sense, but they're what we have and we live in it. We got to provide service in it. Okay. Some of it makes sense when you have rivers and stuff, but other things they don't make sense. Um, so we have those three locations mapped out. I didn't put the
EMS station separate because it literally shares a parking lot. So, we just have to remember that it's down here at this station. I also have where we're sitting right now, the municipal center um as a location on the map and we'll we'll talk about that in a minute.
But so this is what we're doing and you can see we can zoom in pretty tight and I can take a look at what's going on around each station and this makes a little bit more sense when we begin to put calls for service up. Um but this is
our our map of where things are. And then what we do is we begin to build our story. And the first thing that we want to do is we want to give a sense of how far we can travel in a given amount of time.
And I got to work with the internet here. And hopefully it'll cycle soon enough. There we are. So these squatches are a one and a half mile distance by road from each of the locations. So if
we zoom in here down on Slackwood, we see that that one and a half mile territory response goes out of town in a pretty good direction. Three different ways. Your one and a half miles from
Slackwood is into another municipality. The other thing I can tell you is because of this dark shading here, you're also within one and a half miles of the Lawrence Road Fire Station just up the road. So, there's some overlap in
that coverage area. And then we go a little bit north and here's the Lawrence um road fire station. And this area here is showing their coverage area. It's green where it overlaps with Slackwood. We get this
nice brown color. Um but we get to see how far they can respond in that time frame. And then we head up north and we see there's overlap in that one and a half miles from Lawrence Road to Lawrenceville and we're sitting in that
one and a half mile overlap. We're about one and a half miles from both of those stations where we're sitting today and we get up to Lawrenceville and we see how that drive works. But you it's important for us to take into account your road network when we're looking at the calls, right? You have this area
here in the middle of town where there are no roads. So, you don't have a a decent response time there because you you just can't travel to that. Then we get up the north end of town where ETSs is and where my uncle's house used to be
somewhere up in here. Um, and you're not within a mile and a half of any fire station. There's also not a lot of people who live up there. There are some and they deserve to have a good response. and any of the response they're going to get is coming out of
the Lawrenceville station. So, as we do our methodology, this is the first thing we do. We figure out your road network and how you can get there. Now, I'm going to shut off these layers, and you'll see why in a minute because it gets really busy really quick when I begin to put calls up.
So, the next thing we do, and first thing that shows up, is where are all of your EMS calls in 2025? Now, we intentionally do it as a heat map and not as individual points because I can zoom in to an individual address and figure out whether you went went
there if I had the little dots and we don't want that to happen, right, for people's privacy. But we're able to see the busy areas um in town and we get a sense of where we have multiple calls. So, you get this kind of the purpley area. This neighborhood has some calls. There's
some hot spots here, right? There's, I believe, the senior apartments over in this part of town where you have a bunch of calls over here, the Quaker um bridge mall and along this stretch of town on the east side, you have some
dense areas of EMS calls. There's no fire station. There's no EMS station over on that east side of town. We get up in the north corner of town, there's not a lot of calls. There's not a station up there either. So that's something you know you're thinking about
where do you put services you want to think about where your demand is today. So this is your EMS demand and I can put on the layer of
gast 22. Yep. Okay. So we see where is within one and a half miles of the current EMS station. So one and a half miles is roughly a five minute response time because if we're driving somewhere near
the speed limit takes us a minute or so to get to the ambulance then it gets rolling and such that takes us about five minutes. So this is the area of town that's within 5 minutes. And when you look at the where your densest areas
of calls, they are there. But there are some dense pockets that are outside of that. If I were to throw in a fivemile, which is going to be about a 10-minute response time, you're going to cover the
whole town. Um, and that's really sufficient for the vast majority of calls that an ambulance is asked to go to. But we look at ideal performance and that's why we focus on that that mile and a half.
So that's the story with EMS and we turn layers off and on. So there goes that and that and then we turn on the fire calls. And here are the fire calls. And lo and behold, Lawrence
is like most places I've gone to work. Your fire calls and your EMS calls go in about the same places because they're both serving people. And now some of this is overlap because the fire department does respond to some EMS calls. Um but you see the same areas are
relatively busy. Um and this is again, you know, using latitude and longitude. I didn't talk about the the fire or the EMS agency responding out of town, but that did happen. You see that here with fire and then we begin and we can turn on the layers of where the paid staff is
and where the volunteers are and you can begin to see how things how you have your coverage. So, one area that both fire and EMS would have some struggle is on that
eastern edge of town. there's no station over there. When we talk about what the town should think about for five or 10 years down the road with capital planning, we begin to think about where are our gaps. And then we also want to think about what is
development that may or may not happen in this town and where would those be and how would that impact the demand. We don't know for sure what's going to happen. Um, but we we do know where there's conversation about different development and what's forever wild and
what's forever farmland and things like that. So, those are questions that we ask, we try and take into account when we talk about where you need to put your facilities and your people. So, you know, as we're talking about
what we've learned so far, this is the end of it at this point. Um, you know, we have more that we're looking to to gather about your calls for service, but when we talk about locations, we already have that. Like I said, we're sharing it already.
We're going to resume the slideshow, but there's I didn't trust the internet, so I did screenshots of all the maps, but I didn't need them. So, what's next? I got follow-up interviews. I don't know if some of you might have noticed I passed my business card over to the fire marshal because we
didn't have find we didn't find time to talk over the last couple of days. We need to talk. I need to get to know him. There were people that were not available on the EMS side. Um we some stuff has come up related to dispatch and other things that we need to chase
down answers for. Um some financial stuff has come up that we need to get answers for. So these are the kind of supplemental follow-up interviews we're going to do. supplemental data requests. I mentioned, you know, this gap in the EMS data that we didn't think was going to be there. We found it's early in the project. This is when we want to find
these things. We get the supplemental data filled out. So, we get that complete. So, then we do our complete data anal analysis. This what I showed you tonight is very preliminary, very early in the game. We're looking into more. We'll look at it in different, you
know, days, times. Look at what your response times are different times of day. Take into account weekends and things like that to try and figure out where the service is good, where the service needs to be improved. All of that goes into our baseline report. And
as I mentioned, we've we've been asked to opine on a couple of things early in the project, and we will. And those are our interimm recommendations. And then we draft our full options report. We share it as a draft and we want to keep it a draft initially so that people have
a chance to look at it, review it, see if we made a mistake. While I was taking notes during a meeting, I wrote something down and I reverse the numbers. Any of these things happen. We're human. We want to share it while it's a draft so we have a chance to correct it before decisions are made
based on it, before it is made public. And then we get into our final report stage. And that is the end of my presentation. I have my email up on the screen. It's P Bishop. So P for Paul
Bishop Thomas Belling Chesspiece um at cgr.org. And I'm happy to get emails. Uh it really is the best way to chase me down. Sometimes I'm in an office, sometimes I'm at home. Um so I I share my my email
pretty frequently or pretty regularly. That was good. >> Thanks, Paul. If anybody has any questions or and commentary has wants to share anything with Paul, I just ask that you sign in up here and you're free to ask questions. Again, uh we're not going to limit you to time, but just,
you know, be respectful of everybody's >> anyone. Sorry, I'm gonna try to get >> Okay, so I have two questions and I was late, so I apologize if you I got you. >> Okay. >> Okay. So, I saw you showing all the maps in, you know, the historical data, which
is great, but you guys come out here and look at the real world world traffic pattern. So, if you're on 206 in the morning or at like 5:00, it is like you can't go anywhere. It's bumper to bumper and it's a two-lane
road. And you know what concerns me is how you know like fire trucks are going to get through because it it's very hard here. So that's my first question. >> So I'll answer that question. If you look at the screen right now >> um I didn't show this um because again
we have lots of layers that we look at and this is a five minute drive time from this building at 5:00 pm. We also did this map at 8 am at noon and and midnight. and you see that there is, you know, a difference in how that works.
So, yes, we do try and take that into account. Um, and we we're using the data that is available um about normal traffic flows and how that speeds up and slows down. >> Okay? Because it's really important to see like how congested it is right in
this spot. Um, and then the other question I had is I know there's something called the NFPA guidelines and I was curious um if you you know look at those. I know it's not mandatory but do take them into account as you're doing
this study and NFPA is National Fire Protection Association. >> Yeah. So the National Fire Protection Association has two different standards um that are about the operations of fire departments. They have one for career departments and one for volunteer departments. And you're in an
interesting situation because you can use either because you have some career staff, you have some volunteer staff. If you got to the point where you had career staff 247, you'd probably want to target the career one as the one to follow. And so what RFPA does is it says
this is what among many other things um when we talk about the response with a fire department, we talk about what is the minimum amount of staffing you want to get on the scene within a certain period of time taking into account automatic aid and mutual aid. So it
doesn't all have to be your department. So, one of the things that we know is this is science has shown us that in order to to keep a um get a fire contained inside a normal residential structure, you need to have about 14 people showing up within 10
minutes of the alarm who know what they're doing and they need to have the right equipment. Give or take a couple of people depending on what year you draw the study from. But that's the kind of the standard that we're looking at. But it's not just your department, right? So we take into account that you have neighbors that I believe on every
side have a career staff that will send aid if requested for certain ones. So yes, we do look at the NFPA standards. New Jersey also has training standards that they put in your application. So we'll be reviewing those. We do know that all of your entry level firefighter
or everyone to be an a entry firefighter has to meet those standards. >> Okay. because my biggest concern I'll just be vocal about it is consolidation like one central location. I lived in another community for a very long time. Um they looked at the same thing and
quite honestly they ended up not doing consolidation because um they looked at the the population like the a big part of the population was in a certain area and um they looked at the traffic patterns because it was a community
where a lot of buildings took place and the roads were all clogged. So, you know, knowing the geography around here and part of Warren's township being across Route One, you know, a dense population down
206 and not being able, you know, getting a lot jammed up here like that just raises concerns for for me personally. >> Yeah. And I think if you had an unlimited budget, um, you would have maybe five fire stations that are fully staffed 247,
>> right? >> But you don't. And so they didn't have an budget either. They took some older um houses that they had, they refurbished them, etc. >> Yeah. So, so that's you know when we we say so we're not being procriptive and
saying this is what you must do. We come in and we say these are these are the things that we think are reasonable and this is what you have to consider on balance. Right? So, if you're going to, for example, um, invest in recruiting and retaining volunteers, um, this is the amount of money you
should probably put forth to do that. And that equals X number of career firefighters. And I'm not going to go into that this early in the study. But those are the the calculus that you have to think about is is, you know, and for to staff one career fire engine, you
need maybe 16 18 firefighters. and what do you get for that? We try and bring that all up to make it digestible for an audience of the people up here and the people out here so everyone can have a good discussion about where to go. We'll
make a suggestion, but I I don't have to pay taxes here. I don't get to cast a vote here. >> Okay. Yeah. >> Can I do when I'm done? >> Sure. >> Say her name.
>> I guess if you go back to the timeline, >> excuse me. >> Can you just state your name so I could write it down? >> Carol Connley. Okay, >> there we >> Okay, so my question is where this may be a question for the mayor more where
is the opportunities for formal public input? I mean we really appreciate it's a great presentation. Appreciate you being here and I see lots of input from the you're you're creating a technical report and you're talking to great people for that. What I'm concerned
about is at the baseline review, there's no formal public input. At the options review, there's no formal public input. You're going to come up with a great report and then you might get all this public input that you'll need to respond to and you'll be blown home. So, I'm afraid we're going to end up with a
report that says this is what you should do and you will really have no way to evaluate based on the input from the public about how you respond to that. So I'm hope I'm wondering if there could be more opportunity for this stakeholder group along the way. >> We can have a discussion about how best
to to do that. Um you know we we this project timeline these these key key um objectives that I laid out is what's in our contract provide the service. Um, so you know, we were contracted to build a house. Um, and if
and if you want to add if you want to add two bedrooms and double the size of your garage, uh, we can do that. Um, but but we need to have a discussion about how we're going to do that. Or if we're going to add two bedrooms, does that mean we're getting rid of the sun room and and building a smaller kitchen? So
those are are all think we we we do have some ability to flex parts of the report or the parts of the project um and and see where we need to be. For example, I wasn't planning on having to give interm findings about um some stuff and they
said we really need you to. So we're adjusting some things to make that happen. >> Um so I >> I guess that's my point. there's a way to sort of not to have all the problems at the end and then have trouble responding because we don't have the experts here to say well you could do that but you'd have to switch
>> and and and you know when we're here to deliver a final report it is our best effort to that point based on as much input as we can gather um that is objective
and then there are um passion emotions and opinions that also need to be considered because these decisions are not necessarily clear and logical. You have to take other stuff. >> I totally get that. I'm just afraid we make those decision those not just
passions. I mean, those are legitimate, you know, you regulations, there's a 60-day comment period, uh, those are sort of legitimate things for our council to take into account. And if we're if it's just report and they don't have the technical strategic
to say again, would like to respond to that, what are our options in that case? I guess it's really for you, but to have some opportunity for some more formal input from the residents would be >> I guess the question is what um two things I I understand what you're
what you're going for. I sorry I was a little late. Um um I understand from my CDR report is to give us the technical background, the information to sort of help guide our decision, right? and that township council and partnership with
the manager and finances and everything else have to make that decision and respect the community, right? Where your voices up here. Um, so I think of it as I don't think it's it's not a feta compete by any means.
The idea is to get I mean we heard this loud and clear two years ago. We needed to have something with a little more meat on the bones to understand what's really going on in this town. And I think from what I've seen so far, it feels like there's a lot more data that's being adjusted.
>> Even even if it's just your preliminary, thank you for sharing what you did. Um, it goes to show that there's sort of this depth already. Um, I will definitely be staying in contact with with Chris Longo about where this is going and I hope to sort of stay in
contact with him and sort of ask those questions as and any of the council members can have that opportunity as well to sort of be the voices of the community in this sort of quiet phase so that we don't end up in June going going surprise and everybody going,
"What did you just come up with? This is insane. Why are we having a firehouse all the way down at the Brunswick Circle? That doesn't make any sense, right? Like it it has to we need something. I think council needs to get something that makes sense
sort of our initial reaction. It needs to sort of >> I totally get that and you don't want to keep I'll stop but it's just that >> we will be sort of surprised at the end. So we want I want like the opportunity for you to be able to respond to maybe if you hear >> well I I'll ask one one question sort of
pushing back slightly >> judging by the the the the calls that the historic calls patterns that kind of gives you a sense of where you would think a firehouse could be right there. >> No no but see I think we need to step away from the one firehouse. No no no no
but but I'm saying for for the benefit of everyone just stay away from consolidation right now. this is a new a new study, a new report. Let's see where the data leads us, right? And so one could say to his point earlier, in an ideal world, five houses would make
sense, maybe three houses, but in different places would make sense based on those calls. And so let's just see how it plays out. I'll stay in touch with Chris and maybe depending on what the contract is maybe we can kind of have maybe an interim finding just to kind of >> I mean honestly my address
notwithstanding I don't have a prejudged I don't know you know I'm looking forward to seeing the report it's just that I don't want your hands to be tied once you have this technical report and it's going to be hard for you to respond and do something other than what the experts recommendations that that's >> and and a couple things our organization
has been around for 110 years we're not going anywhere I'll pick up the phone, I'll answer the email. Um, because our reputation of of staying involved and making sure that we're providing the right answers is is integral to to our ability to continue to get work and do
this kind of thing. And then we make our information available. This this this mapping isn't going to disappear when I when I turn in the final project. it. Yes, it'll be based on 2025 data, but I imagine if we were to take the calls
from 2020, well, CO was weird, so we won't use that year, but we'll say 2018 and 2025, they're probably not very different. Um, so you know, that the data we have for 2025 will be able to help inform
your decisions for 5 to 10 years. >> Well, thank you for that. Thank you. >> Good evening. >> Hi. >> Uh, ISO ratings, current and future scenarios. Will that be part of the study? ISO, the insurance services
organization, they do something called a public protection classification study. And the public protection classification study takes into account three primary things. One of them is your dispatch center. That is unlikely to be influenced by anything that happens with this study. The other is your water service. That is unlikely to be
influenced by anything in your study. That is half of your PPC score is those two things that have nothing to do with what we're talking about. Now, what we are talking about is the other half, which is your fire department. We've already gotten the PPC report. I have it
somewhere in my briefcase. I haven't read every page of it. Um, but what we typically find in a community like this is we would look at it and find areas where you have some shortfalls. And I'm just going to guess um based on on
previous organizations like this that I've worked with, you have shortfalls in how you record your training. you have shortfalls in your ability to do training and you have shortfalls in your pre-planning. I that's just my guess. I may be off on those, but those are all
areas that you can do things about to improve your ISO rating um with limited changes to your staffing. If you adjust your staffing model is what's one of the things that that the ISO looks at is how many people show up when you have fires.
They don't say just, you know, for the smoke in the building. They want, they'll actually go back and look how many of your volunteers came out when you had a um a a car wash on fire last week. >> Um you know, how many volunteers
actually showed up that night? They're going to look and say, "Oh, they had 12 volunteers show up that night. That was a good response. We're going to count that." Well, um and then during the day, you have 13 firefighters on duty. So they count that in a different way and
that all comes into a calculation about your ISO rating. So we we look at it, we say these are areas that we can see that you might want to improve on um and you wouldn't want to do this because this might make it worse. We also look at what's called the um the standards of
coverage and that was the mapping that we've already done. And that is they look upon what's referred to as the builtupon area in your town. So, they don't count the swamp that you don't have any houses in. They want to see where your calls are and where your responses are. And I can already tell
you that you have a pretty good um from your couple stations you have responses to those calls except on the eastern part of town. >> So, there will be something in there about the Yeah. Is there >> if Yeah. I'm telling you what I already
am making the the the guesses as to where it's going to be. I will confirm. will put in that that that additional information and that 50% you don't control. Well, the county controls some of that and maybe you need to reach out to the county and say you need to have a couple of extra dispatchers on because
that's an area that we got graded poorly on and so did every other fire department that uses county services. >> Are you a 44x? Okay. Hi. >> Hi. >> And um just curious presentation a lot of
good early preliminary data. Um, ISO was a question and and you covered that. What about future development? We all know there's fair share housing and things that have to come into town that are planned and built. Is that in your model? Is that being looked at the
density of that housing? >> So, we we have asked for uh the town's comprehensive plan. We have asked for um and have not had yet a conversation with the planning department. But generally speaking, if somebody hasn't put in the
request for the permit yet, it's hard for us to make a decision about that about how that'll >> So we have affordable housing areas set up, right, where we know development is going to be. The town has a plan for that. >> Just asking that that should be
considered part of this study because you're saying five or 10 years down the road. uh it's going to be here. So >> your your your three fire stations haven't moved in 100 years. >> Correct. >> So you if you have you had one fire station that no longer exists. Um so
that one disappeared and if I'm correct that's on the area of town that doesn't have great service at the moment. Um so you know the next fire station if there is one that's built is going to be there for 100 years. >> Sure. Uh, >> so we we do try and take that into
account, but when they built the fire stations, you have 295 didn't run through the middle of town. >> And you're and you're only looking at 2025 D. Is that correct? >> For precise location of calls, that's the only one we're choosing to map. Yes.
>> Okay. I'm not sure that that's okay. All right. I would say you probably understand. Again, if you're if you're going to try to project trends forward, how I take one sample set from one year and say this is going to be a trend for the next 10 years. If you're
only looking at long, you really need to look at a series of years. I agree from code year out 100%. But there needs to be the call. >> I appreciate your perspective. >> Thank you.
Anyone else? for the record. My name is John. I live in the northern end of town by just for your benefit. >> Okay. >> I'm a former war utility person who worked in understanding about
keys and and everything for suppression and former chief of staff to the largest town in the state. Um I want to first thank the mayor. Thank you. understand the context. Previous reviews of this, I don't think really started with this premise. Let's really get input and see
what the facts are. Um, towns even as large as Edison that have fire paid firefighters and towns like Woodbridge that have fire districts and Hamilton, they have volunteer firefighters. The the conflict you're talking about is not unique. No, for
Lawrence County. It's probably a bit unique for New Jersey in the way we handle municipal service. So I hope you somewhat reflect that that what's here is not a premise that's unique problem or something that only experienced.
>> I I apologize if I gave that impression because um a um friction between career and volunteer is common in nearly every combination department that I've ever worked with. to to one degree or another.
>> The the other thing is are you getting data on for emergency service on private response and private billing? That is again a phenomenon that's not unique to the staff >> related to EMS. EMS yes on response time
from things like capital health for people that are getting bills for their insurance for Medicare and you know working those datas in I don't know if you're going to have access to that point but that's certainly something I would hope you consider >> so are you referring to are there
private ambulances that are responding to calls now >> yes >> okay >> um I I'll have to to have a conversation figure out >> the the other thing that I I think is vitally important right now. We are
going to a mass planning read. Okay. There are going to be significant factors into that development into that new plan not only on our affordable housing need but senior housing but most significantly
the future of a major regional mall. Um you you have to consider where those factors will go in the timing of that into the time of your I'm concerned you're going to be working on land use
information that could become outdated and not give you the dating you need where things may be 10 years. So I it doesn't sound to me like you've had those discussions with the planning people and forgive me I'm not on the planning board. I don't know where we are in the master plan process, but I
think that's kind of un I I will share that we just finally finished I I believe fingers crossed we finally finished all of our numbers for for the affordable housing. Um there are a few interveners. Um and so there might
be a reason why CGR hasn't gotten the latest and greatest from the planning department. But you know the other aspects of what's in the master probably not the other thing I think you need to consider I know it's been raised is I guess I'm a little bit concerned I won't question
your methodology how many years to look at but you know there is that saying past past experiences and results don't give you future predictions of what's going to happen and the basics of public safety in any community in this town is you have to be able to respond at any
point in time to any need for public safety response be it police, fire or emergency at any location in town. I would suggest that one aspect you want to look at back when someone talked about traffic. Try coming from here or from the Lawrence Road fire station and
try responding at how long it takes you to drive from there at any of those time periods you want to look at. the ETSs of the north to uh the train to farmers market in the south
to the east to go to Costco or cross train tracks to launch station and to the west going towards senior housing off federal city. We're going through some major traffic evaluations for new
lights and needs. I think you need that data too because that's really a lag response to where patterns are are reflected in need of attempt to improve our infrastructure. Um, but I think you'll have to look at the fact that even with some of the
improvements we've had done, like up here at Franklin Corner in 206, it's still kind of attracting improvements to what flows in the town. We have a regional mall. We have two township halls. We have two US highways
plus an interstate that comes through here. We have a university that has a graduation ceremony and other events that can drive traffic off the highway. Uh I hope you also look at the need for response to towns to any emergency on any highway that transport isn't a
response to um and hopefully you can get some data as to what the different population um numbers are of the town at any given time. Why this town has about 35,000 residents with all those activities plus
two three major employers here. This town swells to a population in a day that probably could be as much as double or triple it it resal. And I don't know if there's one you do in any of your other evaluations. you
determine commercial buildings that have standby uh fire suppression of of uh the pipe service that I know is not the only answer to fire but the fire repressions obviously isn't that so you you factor
that in in trying to inventory what building suppression >> so that's a a conversation that I haven't had yet with the fire marshal about um you know your your higher risk properties but I'm assuming you have a an idea of an inventory of those buildings.
>> Well, I I have a suspicion, but again, I think that's one of the value you can bring is doing that kind of an inventory can certainly be a benefit not just to you to give us a report to that related to it, but I think for community knowledge. Um, but I think this is I I appreciate this, but I think you heard
this. This has to be an ongoing dialogue and opportunity for more public input and more public education. So I I I also want I'll push back. >> I've been asked to be here for five months. This community was founded 16
something, right? Your public safety has evolved since the early 20th century to where it is today. I'm looking at a snapshot in time to give your elected officials guidance for the next five next five years. I can't guide them to
2050 because no one has really an idea of where we're going to be. We can point in that direction. We can give you an idea on on the on the compass, you know, whether you're going to be heading northeast or or southwest, >> but but we can only give some, you know,
some good guidance based on the information that's going to be available to us. Um, there's going to be certain questions that I have that I know I won't get the answer to. There's going to be avenues of investigation that we would like to pursue that we're not going to be able to. We'll we'll try and
end up not try to we will end up highlighting those at the end of the report saying this is a factor that you need to consider but we we weren't able to or this answer is just unknowable. Um right now I get the policy about where you are going through the central process. The only other thing I would
suggest and this probably directly more to the town. We also have active community organizations. For instance, I served on the main street board up in the historic there's the greater eldidge park association. I think you also need to get and probably there's some
facilitation through the administration of getting to those groups to get input from them because they really are telling about the characters and some of the concerns within the but I I appreciate the fact we have >> Yeah, I I would the the community
conversation piece I'm curious about because outside of calls for service and and response times I'm trying to understand what >> they may be able to facilitate information coming from businesses. I think they also need awareness about this study. I I think the struggle we
all have is yes, we have people here in the room, but they can be a way to facilitate the dialogue. >> Yeah. And that's why we're recording it as well. That's great. Well, thank you so much. I appreciate >> anyone else. This is your chance.
you won't bite. Before we wrap up, >> I just want to say the turnout is incredible. Um, I'm really impressed, although not surprised, at the passion and the interest that this community has. Um, I often say that one of the
upsides about Lawrence Township is that everyone cares. One of the downsizes like official is everyone cares. So, I have to have to sort of take that into account. But I, you know, I appreciate the the questions and comments and definitely I'll and my colleagues on council will be talking with um Chris
about what this contract might look like in terms of trying to get more input. But I I'd say right now my perspective personally is that I'm looking at CGR and this process is really giving council some idea of what how to make a
decision, right? Um, I think at the end of the day, it's gonna it's going to be council's decision and dialogue with the community and and less so about you telling us. I mean, you can guide us, of course, that's what the reports for, but at the end of the day, it's not going to be CGRS coming in and saying this is
what it is. Everybody take it and I'm out of here, right? It's it's going to be up to council and development of the committee. So, look forward to the journey and also excited that it's going to be June. I mean it's been two years two plus years on since
those contentious counseling. So I'm excited as I keep start again. Thank you. This is an opportunity. We're in the we're on the ground floor of this. We're just building the foundation. So this is why we wanted to have this meeting to build credibility for the process to introduce
uh CGR to the to the community and provide an opportunity for dialogue. So, um, if you have any ideas of how we can keep the dialogue going without bringing Paul down for each meeting, uh, email me, call me. Uh, I'm I'm always
available. And, uh, you know, I Well, listen, we want to make this process as as transparent and and open as we can. So, the goal is not to have any surprises at the end. We want you to be along for the
ride through the process. So if anybody has any ideas, reach out to me anytime. Thank you again for coming. You have anything else? >> No. Okay. >> Yeah. So we'll put the presentation on top and this is also recorded. So it's on YouTube.