##VIDEO ID:https://vimeo.com/1047275832## Because it's problem. Alright, we're, we're gonna start in front of you. We're gonna start without yet 'cause we have a room full of people. Sounds good. We'll, we'll start like with Fred Pledge allegiance, just like, alright, we'll see you soon. Sounds good. Bye-Bye. We're good? Yes sir. Alright. Good afternoon everybody. Thank you for coming this afternoon. This is a special meeting of the Westfield Fire Commission. I wish to announce that the meeting is being electronically recorded. Anybody else who's in attendance today who's also electronically recording this by any means, please identify yourself with your name and address at this time. Any recordings? There is one person, Sir, please. Cliff Clark with the Westfield Blues. Very good. Thank you. Commissioner? Yes. Just for everybody in the room to know that um, this whole meeting is being recorded. Video. Okay. So it's gonna be on video, be able to be seen on Vimeo and YouTube after the meeting. At some point I would've worn a seat had I known it was being videoed. Thank you. Can I have a low call of the fire commissioner? Please Can Fire Commissioner Jeffrey Siegel, present fire Commissioner Jeffrey Tran, present and fire commissioner Brian Sutton Is absent at this time, but I understand he's en route. May I ask you all to rise please for the Pledge of Allegiance? I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice. Thank you everybody. Please be seated. At this point in the meeting, we always open up the meeting for public participation. Public participation can last no longer than 15 minutes. Anybody who wishes to speak has a three minimum maximum. Would anybody like to participate in public participation? Very good. The new first item on new business for this meeting is a presentation, uh, to the Westfield Fire Commission and all those in attendance by Dave Houghton of the, uh, municipal Resource Incorporated, MRI on his report. And I'm just gonna let Dave tell us all about what he was retained to do and what his results are. Thank you very much. Good afternoon everybody. This is probably the biggest crowd I have to do a presentation of report. So thank you guys for your interest in that. Um, I can tell you that this is unusual in the sense that nobody has seen the report yet. Generally presentations is usually out advance so that questions can answer questions unfortunately is not the case. Uh, I did get word, uh, about 15 minutes ago that the mayor has the report as soon as I done. So I will email this report to the chief who in everybody, the fire department and whether you all have an opportunity to look at the same time. If you're not from the department, um, I dunno whether it's gonna be posted or whether you can reach out to the chief to be able to get a copy of it. Okay? It's a public document so we can released it. Absolutely. So Dave, just so you know, I am in Mayor Pipe. It has been released already and I would consider if you could, taking a couple minute recess for the facts that he doesn't have his technical aspects done. And if I can get the technical aspects working, I think it's worthwhile. Five minute recess if you can pull it up. If you don't want to do that, I don't. I totally understand. It's your fire commission. The reason why I released the report directly to the fire commission is so that there were a myriad of different questions that came to the fire commission that they hadn't seen before. So the intent was to release it to the fire commission. You all now have 'em in your emails. You have a full report, you wanna pull 'em up, you can and you disseminate 'em as soon as you want to disseminate 'em. You can fire 'em out to everybody else. But if you would consider taking a five minute recess. I'll see if I can't get up on the board For you. Is that what you'd like, Dave? It's fine. I can do it one way or very good. Alright, well then let's take that five minute recess. Thank you everybody. We you got your remote Lunch? Alright, I can have everybody's attention. We're gonna go back into session at this time. Can we note for the record that, uh, Dr. Sutton, the third fire commissioner, is now present. I'm gonna turn the floor back to you Again. Thank you guys for, for being here. Just a little real quick history. It's a tough room. Excuse me. Sorry to have my back to you folks for the entire presentation, but that apparently is gonna be the way it is. So, uh, for those of you that I did not meet during the interviews, uh, my name's David Houghton. I've been in the fire service about 43 years now. I retired five years ago from, um, Wayland as full-time fire chief. Um, and moved to my place in New Hampshire where I'm currently now a deputy in the combination department. So I'm still in the fire service today, uh, as a practitioner doing it. So we're not looking at people that are, have retired and have nothing better to do. Um, I'm somebody that's still living in the fire service. So everything in the report is something that is, uh, valid. Um, I probably have done in the last five years since I retired, I've probably done 40 of these reports for different size communities up and down the East coast. So as far as south as Pennsylvania all up to the Canadian border. So it's nothing that, um, we haven't done before. Uh, I will tell you that the document itself is 178 pages long and that's covered to cover. That's on it. Um, there's a quite a bit of information that is in it. Um, I'm gonna go through, if you can't see the PowerPoint, I'm gonna actually read left on the PowerPoint, So you're Really not gonna be missing anything. Um, I will share the PowerPoint with the chief, then you can send it back out with, along with the document if you would like. So the goal today really is, and for this whole report is that it becomes a useful guide. We don't want it to be something that, uh, the city has spent money on. We spent a lot of time on and it just sits on a shelf and collects dust. So our hope is that, uh, it's guide and it's a resource that helps show shape the vision for the success of the Westfield Fire Department as an organization that approaches the challenges and transitions today and in the future. The fire service, as we all know, is changing. We hope that we've look far enough ahead on some of the stuff and included it into the report. Um, how do we get here? I guess an important point. So the city wanted to have an outside group of people come in and look at the fire department, its organization and its operation, and to come up with some recommendations of things that can be done to help improve the department and move the department forward. Um, we have done that. We spent a couple of days here, um, touring the town, our city I should say, looking at the fire stations, the equipment, um, dispatch, um, and a lot of the target hazards. And there are a lot of target hazards in the city that, uh, that I was able to view and I was think is that I don't think your typical resident has a clue about there is a lot of things that could go wrong and a lot of things in this community that you guys are gonna up responding to, uh, without a doubt on that. Um, we concluded interviews both in person and on zoom. Majority of which were in person either as individuals or with groups. Um, I would like to think we probably exceeded 30 something people that we sat with. Um, some ties to the fire department. Uh, a couple of people in, um, dispatch, but majority of the people were the fire department. And for those of you that we sat down with, I think I went home with writers cramp the day that we were at station two. Um, we took an awful lot of notes and the one thing that was very clear to us when we were doing our interviews is there's a lot of things that are common themes and that's really what we look for. So what things are people saying? There are things that we could do as a department to help improve things for the future. And we found an awful lot of what you said was very common. So those are the things that we move forward for. So for some of you, when you read the report, if you've made comments and it didn't make it into the report, I call it a one-off, it might have been a great thing, but it was nothing that was consistent with the majority of the people. So it didn't get moved forward into the project. So don't think that we didn't take that into consideration. Consideration, we absolutely did when we moved the project forward. So, um, right now there is, uh, hundreds of pages of documents that we went through. I think the file is probably about this thick. So I rather we gotta commend the chief and your staff. Um, we asked for an awful lot and I know you spent an awful lot of time, uh, coming up with the facts and figures. Um, those are things that really help drive the trends, which is what really we're looking for of where the department is going. And those are the types of things that we're able to call out into the report itself. So let me just put this right up front, a big disclaimer. So there will be people, and some of you are in the room that are not gonna agree with this report and or some of the findings and recommendations that we have made. Um, that is not unusual. So everybody in this room, if everybody read this report and turned around and say we agree a hundred percent with everything, I would be shocked because that's just not normal. Normal is people are gonna say, oh, I don't agree with this. That's okay. I did, we wrote the report based on the information that we were given either in writing facts and figures or information that you gave us as part of your interviews or things that we saw ourselves when we did the tour of the city or a tour of the stations. Um, it is hope that at a minimum, this document, once again, uh, we'll just begin a conversation. So if there's something in here you don't agree with, then you need to have the conversation, whether it be with the chief or through the fire commission or whoever it is that you need to get with, um, to be able to have the discussion as to whether that's something that should move forward and different priority. That's something that we did not do. We did not take the 140, about 140 recommendations that are in here and put them in any particular order. So there is an order by chapter of sections. So everything we talked about stations is, there's recommendations for stations, recommendations for administration, for training, for fire prevention, on and on. There are individual sections that are within it. And the appropriate recommendations are within each one of those sections. They're not in any priority order. That is something for the commission and for the fire chief and your staff to be able to look at and to take the ones out that you think are easy things to do and things that you can move forward immediately. And there are other things that may take longer time planning and funding and stuff to do, but that's not for us to do. That's something that you as a community involving the firefighters and the commission and the management of the fire department to be able to figure out, um, for that. So what I did do, the bottom line, it is okay to agree to not agree, okay? So if you don't agree with something I'm saying it's okay, I'm not gonna be offended by it. Um, if it's something that you really feel strongly that you don't agree with, you have your, you go through the union, you could go through your chain of command within your department, you can have those discussions. It does not change the document. The document will not get changed. It is what it is. It is a final document. It is what you're going to get emailed, which is the exact same document. We are not making any changes to it at this point. Uh, the document itself was wrapped up in late October, probably, I think it was September, went to an editor. Um, and it's been, that's been that long. I literally had to sit there last night and reread it to re-familiarize myself with a lot of what's in there. Each department can help each other out. But when we're in these silos, that does not happen that way. So some time needs to be invested. It's a no cost item to be invested where regular meetings can be scheduled at department head meetings or even with amongst administration within departments that can share ideas and resources, um, and to try and work ourselves out of these silos that we're in. Um, Nope, let's try this one. Nope, that's way too ahead of me here. Uh, so I have another couple in here. So there is a work increase, um, load on the administration staff, especially at the chief's level. Um, it is very uncommon to not find a number two in command in a city department like yours. So we are recommending that there be a non-union assistant chief's position created. However, that assistant chief's, one of the major tasks needs to be that that assistant chief works daily with the deputy chiefs because each one of the Deputy chiefs has their own responsibility for different aspects of the operation of the fire department and there's no backup. So if something happens and Deputy Chief X is taking care of EMS and something happened and he's gone for two months, who steps in Right now it's the chief. So if he's stepping in and doing it, what work can he not get done? Because he's gotta take the work that the deputy was doing. So this assistant chief would take some of the workload off of the deputies to be their backups, but would also be someone that administratively by the chief can rely, rely on to help him get some of the functions and all that he needs to get done. Um, so the recommendation is once again to be able to add a, uh, non-union assistant fire chief, uh, to the ranks of the department. Um, a lack of outdated, standardized operational and response procedures, rules and regulations for the department to follow. Um, that should be creating a joint labor management between the union and the administration to be able to look at your current SOPs that you have and do a complete overhaul and update to those to come up to the modern day fire department. So when we looked at your SOPs briefly, you are behind on some of the areas. It's some areas you exceed on. It's just time to take the entire document and go from end to end on. Um, we recommend, and I have done it, my private department pre your prior department. Um, we do it every two years. So every two years we literally take the SOP binder and we go cover to cover on it and update it. A true SOP should just document the way you're conducting your day-to-day business today. That's what a true SOP should be. Rules and regulations, totally different if they, you have a set of rules and regulations, failure to follow a rule of regulation should mean a ramification somewhere along the line. However, if you're an officer in failure to follow an SOP if it's written correctly, you should be able to justify why you didn't follow the SOP no crime, no file. So two completely separate documents. One is ramifications, one is the way we operate, but it's written in such a way that the officers that are on scene can make judgment calls and not have to worry about not following it. Exactly. So, um, for those of you that, um, for the, for the union members anyway, when I first did it in my department, just a quick story, they were all upset about it. Oh, you're just going to use this to, to hang us up on something. So we went two years at the two year mark. I said, the union, here's a set of SOPs, please mark them up and then we're gonna meet. And we met three weeks later and we sat down in the office and closed the door. And I said, if we are here beyond noontime, I'm buying lunch. My first question is, how many times in the last three years has somebody had to come into this office with union representation and be held accountable for an S So p they didn't follow. And they're all looking around, well, we don't think that happened. I gave him a folder and I said, here's every phone call I've taken in the last three years, but because you followed the SOPI had your back. So SOPs are really an important thing to have. So we're encouraging that to get done. Um, Add an officer to station two, and that's what's up on the screen there. Um, there is no supervisory level down at that station. Every fire station should have a supervisor of some type. At a bare minimum, it should be the rank of lieutenant that's at that station. I know currently you don't run that way, but we strongly recommend that there's an officer at each station for nothing more than accountability of the firefighters that are there and the operations that are there, the facilities and everything. That would be the go-to person for that. Um, how that happens, once again, we're not the problem solvers here. We're just making a recommendation. There should be one. How that comes to fruition is totally between management and the firefighters union to be able to figure out, okay, figure, uh, the lack of outdated, standardized operational response. Uh, that's repeated on that one. So lack of, forget that one. Uh, facilities, uh, sorry, address the overloaded Inspection services as one before that. So we know that you have the one full-time person that's assigned to doing the inspections as part of the inspector's program. Um, there's a few things with that that comes to mind. First of all, it's a stepping stone within your department. So when you move to that, even though you're try and do the best that you can, I'd be willing to bet you are looking to get out of that office because the workload is so tremendous and get back on the line again and be a deputy on the line. So the recommendation is to be able to get some support in the inspection of services part of the fire department. It is no doubt in my mind that there is more than enough work for a minimum of two people to be able to be plan reviewing and doing the follow up phone calls, doing out in the field and doing the inspections. Everything from the oil tanks to the 26 Fs, to the new buildings and all of the systems that are in these new buildings. There's a lot of work to be done there. And really what's not fair is you have one person in there and as you found out recently that one person is out sick, someone gets thrown into the mix but has no idea of what's taking place the last six or eight months. So having another person in there, once again, there's some redundancy, there's some cooperative efforts that are happening, um, is an important feature. The other thing with inspections that came out, uh, very loud and clear was the number of phone calls that come in to the office. Um, that is answered by the admin staff right now to answer for inspections. Having a person, whether it be full-time or part-time, that's a dedicated person that does the phone calls, the scheduling, and any of the paperwork and all that they can, inspection of services would be a huge asset. We have to remember that everybody that's out there that's calling for an inspection is really one of our customers. They're a taxpayer, whether they're commercial or they're residential and the department owes them the courtesy of taking care of whatever that question is or whatever that inspection is in a reasonable timeframe and you only have one person. It's just impossible for that person to be able to keep up. So the recommendation once again is to be able to increase the staffing level in the, uh, inspection of service as part of the department for the facilities, um, right off the bat. Um, do an air quality test to station three and see what that comes up with. I understand that since we have visited station three, there's been a significant amount of improvements that have been made, but I would still encourage the city to nothing else, get a good baseline for the air quality that's in that station. Um, station two being so new, we didn't see anything that threw any flags. Um, but if, if, if powers to be would like to, then I would suggest doing it at all three stations is just getting an air quality task to find out that everything in that building is perfectly fine or there are corrections that need to be made. Um, that's, that's gonna be the number one thing that would be on our list to do. Um, we also think that the lack of a training facility in a city this size and the ability to train your firefighters in something more realistic than just going over to the woods and putting the platform up and skirting water into the trees. Um, lack of having a building that someone gives you to do training in, um, is really important. And we all know one thing that we train the most on is the things we do the least of, right? So we train every day for fires. Know we train every day for EMS probably, but we go on EMS calls all the time. Um, but having a training facility, the other important part is we have a maintenance facility, which you are very fortunate to have a dedicated mechanic to doing maintenance. However we taught that facility, it is very much not a desirable, safe environment for that individual to work in. He can't even put your tower truck inside completely. Um, if it goes outta service for any reason, the the last must stay outside. Um, not appropriate. Uh, we also learned as part of this is that there is some land out behind station two. So we think it would be important for the city to at least explore the looking at that land and being able to, you know, plan it all out, be able to build a combination maintenance facility training facility out there. Um, one is it's close enough to the station that when a mechanic is out there by himself, there's at least somebody close by that can keep an eye on him, if case something God forbid, should happen. Um, but once again, having the training and the mechanic stuff together I think would be a huge improvement for the, for the city to be able to do. Um, uh, fire headquarters, we toured fire headquarters. It's a great building. Uh, it's in a great location. We couldn't be in a better location for the city. However, um, when we kind of toured through it, the department is growing. There are more males and females working together now. Um, there needs to be the point where the facilities can be brought up to, it's comfortable for everybody to work in. Um, it needs, there's a lot of things that could be done. So we're recommending that they do a multi-year, kind of a program year one, be able to hire somebody to come in to do a spatial needs study, to look at what the needs are today and what the needs are gonna be approximately 10 years from now. Look at the current facility and figure out what can we do to modify the current facility, stay where we are, but yet have it upgraded, um, to a modern day fire station. So that's one of the other recommendations for the facilities that we're doing. Um, as far as station two goes, um, it's a great facility, especially for two people. There's a lot of room down there. Um, station three, once again, it's a great layout of a facility. It just, uh, may need a little updating to it. And like I said, I learned today that it seems like some of that might be done already or at least being processed already. So the next one down is another one of those positions, um, which is the training officer's position. So the one thing that's lacking is really some consistency and some funding for training. Um, it didn't go unnoticed to any of us that when you're the training officer, once again it is a stepping stone. So when you're in that position, the next promotion possible you're out the door. So we did ask about how consistent is training. And a lot of people we ask say, well, it depends on who's there as to how much gets done. Um, the training officer also doubles as an officer on the tower during the days he's working. So if the tower is out, no training happens. Um, once again, training is so important today and documenting that training and being able to pull up anybody's training records at any time is very, very important for a city or a town to be able to have. Um, that position we think is a very key position. Um, we would also recommend that that position be considered into a deputy chief's role. And that person would be somebody who would want to stay and do training. So it could be somebody towards the end of their career or somebody that's just saying, I don't wanna be on the line anymore. I really wanna do training. It's in my niche. They have the credentials and you're there for the long term. So you can do some planning for the long term, not for the short term. It's happening now. And once again, just as you get rolling with training, somebody retires and there's a promotion, person comes outta training next, next guy comes in the door and tries to pick up the ball and move with it. The problem that we see is that there really is no ball to move. So everybody going in has to pick up something and try and build even further on it and move it forward. Um, so that should be one of the primary goals is to be able to do that. The other part of that is, um, there is no funding at all for any outside training. So if the training doesn't put take place on duty or doesn't take place as part of a new recruit coming in the door that has to go to the academy, there's no training. Most city departments and most town departments have people that have, I'll say their niche. Someone might be a technical rescue person, someone might be a great person that wants to do fire investigations. Someone might be a great person. The community needs to invest in those people. First of all, it keeps their interest up, it keeps them motivated in the department, but more importantly, it gives the department and the city, city tools or people to be able to take care of these incidents when they come up. So the recommendation is to begin to build out a budget for that and be able to offer some off-duty outside training. And once again, it's a collaborative effort to find out what that is and how involved that is. I would imagine it would be something that over the years is gonna have to be rolled up. It can't start full more tomorrow morning or next budget year, but it should be something at least considered for. So training is one of the, uh, one of the big items for that. We're not lost about safety by the numbers. Uh, once again, the recommendation is, uh, through the NFPA standards. We all know that 14 to 15 firefighters on the fire ground is what is recommended to have. How you get that, there's a whole host of ways that are doing it. You need to start considering not only the on duty staff, but the number of people that might be on duty tied to an ambulance doing a transport, but using automatic aid so that automatic aid can count in the numbers that are coming in. Um, it's something, once again, having 14 or 15 firefighters on the fire ground for even a, uh, you know, women contents or a small structure fire, some type is the norm. It is the standard and we need to work towards getting that in some method or some way to be able to do that. Uh, automatic aid is becoming more and more and more popular. So you guys would be giving it as well as receiving it. Uh, anything. Uh, for us, for instance, in my community, we move two other towns. We get a report of any building fire and that's to guarantee us that with the on-duty staff and these two coming in, we'll have 14 firefighters on the fire ground within the first eight minutes. So that's something that we're striving to keep going for what happen all the time. Hell, I'm from Northern New Hampshire, we get snowstorms just like you guys do. So in the snowy weather, we know it's gonna take longer, but at least we're moving the process forward and doing what we can to make sure those people are on the, on the road coming out. Um, review of the run cards, it's time to do the run cards to make sure that the appropriate number of people are coming on apparatus that are coming to you to make sure that the people on the apparatus are the certified people that can go into buildings and not just, uh, pump operators or people that can do exterior operations. We need to make guarantee that what you're giving, you're receiving. So run cars need to be looked at as well as the individual departments to make sure you're getting the resources with the staffing that you anticipate getting. Some other recommendations that we have down there, um, is one is to explore the, the, the coordination and the, uh, consist, sorry, the coordination and the future of, uh, the board of fire commissioners and their roles and responsibilities. Um, in today's modern day we see fire commissions that are, that are going away. However, not every city or town can do away with them. It's a whole legislative move. There's a whole bunch of things. So when we looked at it, there are some things that rules and responsibility wise for the commission you may want to look at. So for instance, the one big one that came up, um, during our discussions was the timeframe it takes from the time you take an application in until the time somebody is approved to start to work. Part of the issue is if the chief wants to hire somebody, he needs to come before the commission. There's a posting timeframe for you to be able to meet and then it's a matter of having people that are there to do it. Uh, what we have seen in other departments, uh, and I can't say that's happened here, is there are more jobs out there than we have people to fill them right now. So we need to do what we can to reduce the number of days it takes from an application to putting somebody on on the job. So one of the hangups potentially could be here that we're seeing is that the way the schedule works for the commission and that may not be conducive to getting the candidates who eventually are gonna get frustrated, they're gonna apply another department and get hired quicker. So this is one of the few departments that the fire commission actually approves. Um, the training, uh, approves new hires, promotions, certainly you can wait on, um, you know, they can wait a week or whatever your timeframe is from your time, you scheduling meetings, you actually have it making the decision. But new hires is probably the biggest thing that I think that, um, you may wanna look at how you do that and whether that type of a thing can be moved over and let the mayor's office handle it for you. Um, and then you will certainly get the person to, um, to look at but hold back or to delay any start of any new person. Um, today it could be detrimental to the department because people will move on and go elsewhere. Um, like I said, there are more job openings than there are people looking to take the job. When I first came on, I had to fight for my position, 35 people for one position. Today we're lucky if we get two people for one position, one of which was has a record. So we can't even move them forward at all. And the other person hope is healthy enough to pass the PAT and the physical to bring 'em on board. So timing is really crucial in our new hiring for that. Um, the next one is to explore the removal of the fire chief from the civil service position. Uh, one of the things that, um, let me get by this slide here for you. Um, why do we keep doing this one? I dunno, uh, explore the role of the fire chief from the civil service position. Um, right now, the way it seems to be set up is civil service, the way it's set up for you folks, for your chief, it comes from within. Um, that is not always the best case. Um, there are a couple options that the city could have. One is to open up the civil service exam to outside and have anybody that's in Massachusetts apply to take the chief's test and be able to move them. Um, the other option is to remove it completely, which opens the pool up. We do, uh, a ton of assessment centers. I'm doing five assessment centers the last week of January, everywhere from Pennsylvania up through Massachusetts, the Cape and Central Massachusetts. Uh, we do assessment centers to help them, um, weed out and get the best quality candidate that they can. Um, there's nothing wrong with hiring from the outside. And I will tell you from my experience, even in my own department, sometimes bringing someone in from the outside is a good thing because we get kind of caught in our rut and we get caught in. That's the way we've always done it. And we once again, we live in our silo and we don't want anybody from the outside coming in sometimes bringing someone from the outside in with fresh ideas. Remotivate officers motivates firefighters, looks at things from a different perspective, is able to help the department move forward. Um, that is the removal of the fire chief from the civil service is a long process. Um, it, it may not, it may take a year and a half, it could take two years to be able to do that. Um, there's language that you have in your individual contracts that have to be looked at and is also everything through the state level to be able to remove that position. But what you can still do is open up the pool of candidates and be able to look, I'm not saying that there is not a qualified candidate in house. They very well be the best person in house, but at least it gives you an opportunity to look at more than just the group that we're looking at right now for candidates. Um, so that's something that you, um, should definitely look at. Doing the fee schedule for inspections is something, um, we look at it every two years. Um, fees to me are just the cost of doing business. So any one of our permits and all that go out, we are never gonna make enough money to pay for our positions in our inspections. However, the more money revenue we can bring in, the more we can help offset the cost of that. Um, that's something that needs to be reviewed not only for inspections but also for your ambulance fees that they should also be looked at, um, at least every two years. Um, I know for the ambulance, uh, side of the house, we generally look at whatever the Medicare Medicaid rates are and do a percentage above that. And that's generally what our billing rates have been and kind of a recommendation for that. Uh, the state of New Hampshire just did a study and they're recommending 200 and I think it's 220% over Medicare should be the average billing rate. Um, that would be something that once again you could look at, there's plenty of data out there to be able to help with that. Uh, apply for grants. So the one thing about grants is there are an awful lot of grants that are out there. Not only are there federal grants, there's a lot of private grants that are out there. It's just knowing that the grants are there. But more importantly it's finding the right person to write the grant. So there are grant writers that are out there and they, for the value of what you get on receiving a grant, uh, and what you pay to have a grant writer write it for you, it certainly makes it well worthwhile. The one thing that, um, the city should look for if they want to increase staffing beyond what we have here for the line people is to look at a safer grant. Um, you are a large city and you have the College of the hospital. A safer grant would probably be pretty good bet. Um, there are many departments in Massachusetts that have been able to land a safer grant. Um, the Safer grant, once again takes care of funding for these firefighters over a period of time. And that phases out over a period of time when the city would have to pick up the full boat. Um, at that time, and I don't know what the new one is, I believe the last one was like three years, I think of a timeframe, um, that they would pay for benefits and salaries and then it would phase into the city would have to absorb those at the end. But there are an awful lot of grants that are out there, both, like I say, private grants and uh, and the federal Grants State has money for fire education through the Safe grants if I'm not sure if you're receiving those funds and using them still. Um, but there's plenty of money that are out there. There's equipment grants through the state. There's a lot of stuff that's out there. You just gotta know that they're there and have the right person write the grant to be able to land it. Uh, so how do we compare to others? So this is a, this is something that we always get asked, well how does we compare to everybody else around us? So what we had done is we had taken, um, through the mayor's office and through the chief, um, we had talked with a list of communities that are in Massachusetts that would be close to comparing to the city here. Um, and those are Fitchburg, Leominster Chicopee in North Hampton. And when you get a copy of this, if you go right to page 37 to 47, there's a whole bunch of fields that we asked for data for and we took the data and we gave an average and then we said this is what Westfield has and here's the difference. So out of that, I took some of the top items that are on the list. So you guys, right now in Westfield, you are exceeding the average land area of those communities that are there. You cover more square miles than all of them. Do you have more structure fires in 2023 than everybody else? Didn't you have more total incidents in 2023 and just, uh, to put it out there, when you look at it, the report, there's also a footnote in there, which I actually discussed with the chief today. Um, your EMS calls are not fully counted. The information that we use comes from MFer. MFer only counts an incident when an engine company goes with them. But there are many calls that you may not go and the engine, the ambulance goes only. So the numbers that you're gonna see in there, it gives you a footnote, is really just for fire apparatus and not just your medicals. We did put the note in for medicals and we're not sure where those two cross. Um, so you need to look at that. But overall, the total number of incidents of all of the cities combined, you guys are exceeding the total number of ambulance revenue. You have the highest ambulance revenue of all of the communities that we looked at. You also have, unfortunately, you have the total fire loss. You um, have the highest total fire loss of all of those cities combined. So you have an awful lot of fire loss for that. Uh, and you also have the highest number of paramedics. So the good news about if you have that high number of paramedics means that your ambulance billing can be higher as well. So therefore your ambulance revenue should be higher as well. But here's where you definitely are falling back on. So you're firing EMS budget in total is less than any of the other communities. Your cost per capita, you guys are less. So that's the cost per person in city is less than any of the other communities. Every other community, the cost per capita is higher. That kind of goes hand in hand with the higher the budget and the fewer people, um, officers on each shift. You are down not having a training facility. You are one of the few that don't have a training facility. The firefighter injury and civilian deaths, you guys definitely are fall below that. So that's kudos to you. You're remaining healthy and you're making sure that your civilians, that they have a fire are getting out and they're not getting, uh, any casualties from that. Your total number of staff and fire prevention, which we talked about, is also the lowest of everybody. And the use of automatic aid currently does not take place, but everybody else is using that and that's once again to make sure that they get that 14 to 15 number or higher on the fire ground for that. So overall, like I said, there's 140 recommendations that are in this in the document itself. Um, the one things that we want to make sure of is that the document, once again, doesn't just sit on the shelf and collect dust, um, that it is used to help move the department forward. There is enough in there for the last few 10 years, um, to help. If you look at every one of these and you just put them in some type of priority order, not everything that's in there is a cost item. There's a lot of things that are no cost items. They're just things that need to get done and those are called out. But the last thing you wanna do is become a name on an OSH report. So how do you do that? You take a lot of the recommendations that we have in here. A lot of it has to do with firefighter health and safety. It has to do with your operations to make sure that you all maintain, um, a safe environment to work in, um, that's in there. So we want you to be able to take that and and to, to use that as a tool to help the department move forward. Um, we need to make sure that we stay on top of. I bet you if I looked around the room and I asked everybody here for one of the things that NIOSH says is the top five reasons why the firefighters are dying. It is common throughout the country. You guys are very much ahead of the curve on some things and some things you are not. I'll let you go back and look at the report and look at NIOSH report and figure out where your weaknesses are. We do call out some of them in the report and if you can improve on those, it would certainly improve on um, uh, anything that should happen. As far as firefighter safety goes. Um, each one of these, they're there can be just, uh, reasonably taken care of. You can easily put these in some type of priority order and move forward, but it's not without challenges. So the challenges that you're gonna have is you're gonna have to educate the residents of the community that are paying for this. What is in it for them? What's the value of having a full fledged fire and EMS department? What services are you providing? You go to a small core of people every year that you're providing a service to and they appreciate everything that you do. But there's a bigger core of people that look at, I just keep paying taxes and I keep paying for fire department. I never use them, but they're not thinking about but the day I need them, they're gonna be there and they're gonna show up and they're gonna do a job. So we need to educate and do a better job. And that's just not here in Westfield. That is everywhere. We need a better job of educating people on what we do for fires are down. So why don't we, firefighters, your fires are down, but your call volume is going up. What call volume. So you need to explain to 'em what type of other calls that you go on. They may not be aware of the types of things that you do. Um, we need to do all of that. Um, long term challenge of recruit retention. Uh, and that's just not here. That is everywhere. And I certainly hope that the younger people that you have on the job here, you do what you can to make sure that they stay with you. You've invested some time in bringing them on board. Um, there's nothing more frustrating than being a chief and getting someone through the fire academy and two months later they transfer into another department. Why they go to the other department? 'cause the money is more, the benefits are more, or the work conditions are better. I don't get mandatory overtime all the time. I don't get this, I don't get that if I go to them. So we need to work together to make sure that we take care of any of these challenges, um, that we can and make sure that we maintain as many of these people that we have and that we're recruiting in and make sure that we can retain them from for staying with us. So looking to the future, um, this planned growth, the, the city's still gonna be growing, especially in the commercial side of things. We we're seeing growth of, uh, things that are happening and the department itself has to be reasonably, and I'm gonna say the word reasonably prepared, you cannot prepare yourself from the 7 47 falling out of the sky. You cannot prepare yourself and have enough people here for the bus accident to get happen on the turnpike. There's, there's just no way to prepare to have enough people here to handle all that. So we have to look at what can we handle reasonably and what can we build on our plans to use our mutual aid resources to handle. So that's something that we really have to take a closer look at to make sure that we have a plan in place to take care of the reasonable incidents. And then those incidents that are above and beyond that, um, is, like I say, we hope that the plan itself, the report itself becomes a tool in your toolbox and helps you develop a roadmap. Um, we originally asked early on, would we develop a roadmap for you? So we thought about it and we kicked it around. The problem with writing a roadmap and publishing a roadmap means we say, this is the roadmap you should follow. Other people are gonna say, well, MRI said you should be doing this, this, and this, and not this priorities change the recommendations that we have in here. Some things today you say, oh, that's a priority and a year from now I say, no, no, but this is a bigger priority. We should move this one up. If we write a roadmap, we're help, we're kind of locking you in to following something that we don't think is appropriate. We want the department and the commission to be able to make your own roadmap and look at the roadmap and make alterations to it every year as you make your goals and objectives and your budget requests, um, to do that with. It's not that that you can write today. That's gonna be a perfect roadmap for the next 10 years. 'cause think about what we did 10 years ago and what we're doing today. We're doing an awful lot more today and a lot more different things today than we ever did 10 years ago. So it'll be impossible to write a roadmap that's something that's reasonable and that you could stick to. So we looked at it and really for the most part, you guys are very well equipped. We know that you have some new apparatus that's coming in. Um, you are pretty well managed. Um, you're, you're well trained, but you can, every department can do this. We can all train better. We can all do better. Um, when we, we are very confident and we've actually seen some pictures and some videos of fires that you guys have. You're a pretty well oiled machine. You get the job done and you're getting it done safely by looking at the number of, uh, injuries that you don't have. Um, you're getting it done. So the most important thing is that we want to make sure the residents understand that this report did not find a lot of huge negative concerns in it at all. Everything that we're recommending, we think are reasonable recommendations to help build the department and move the department forward. But you guys are nowhere in the critical stage of anything that we've seen in other departments elsewhere that we've done studies for. So you are doing very well, but like every other department, we can do better. Um, the city itself needs to understand that there's, there's, there's a group of people that are sitting right here in this room that all do the job. And you need to be given the tools to do the job. You need to be an environment to do the job. And I think the city's trying to work with you to get that done. Um, can we do better? Absolutely. But there's nothing worse than sitting on opposite sides of the street and arguing, well, they should do this and they should do that. We need to sit down at the table and collaboratively work together. That's the firefighters, that's the management staff, that's the commission and that's the mayor and the mayor's folks as well. Everybody needs to sit around the table and work these things together, not individual silos. It does not work. It just creates frustration. Um, it it just airs things that shouldn't be aired. We need to stop all of that. We need to sit down and just work altogether on it. Uh, once again, the city should feel very confident that, uh, you as an organization, uh, are very proactive. You're faithful, you show up to work 24 7, 365. There's enough staff here to be able to make things happen. Uh, there's a lot of dedication and I will say that, um, you have the most people that we have ever interviewed for a study. So that right there tells us that you have a lot of, you have a lot of compassion and a lot of interest, a lot of comments that we got from people both at the interviews and email to us afterwards. And we really appreciate all of that because that's what helped build this. This is nothing that we dreamed up. This is stuff that came from you folks, came from the data that we collected. This is, this is you guys and you need to continue to do this. You need to continue to work together now to take this, create a plan and help implement that plan and move that plan forward. Uh, however, that's however that animal is gonna look. We don't know, like I said, we, we didn't feel it was right to write your map for you. You guys need to write your own roadmap for it. Um, you guys should really be commended. There really is an awful lot, uh, of effort that you guys put in and the support that you're getting. The city does support you guys. Um, there's no doubt about it. Could it be better? It could be better everywhere. Yes, we all like to make six figures every year. We'd all like to have brand new fire trucks, but in the real world, that's not gonna happen. So we just have to understand that. And you need to be commended for taking the efforts that you guys are doing every single day to move the department forward. Once again, you can't do it alone. You gotta get more collaborative with each other, um, and with the city and with the management of the department to be able to do that. So just a couple of final thoughts. There's 140 recommendations that we put into the bar. Um, you wanna look at each one of those recommendations as a goal. Some of these you're gonna be able to take care of in no time. Some of you're gonna take quite a bit of time to do. Some of you can combine together. Do you want to approach each one of these recommendations and come up with kind of a strategic, systematic way to develop any short or long term goals and try and work to implementing those goals. And then when you succeed in any one of them, make it an accomplishment, realize you succeeded, you are able to get something accomplished that helps move the department forward to take every one of these independently and just look at them that way and try and move each one of these into fruition and get it done for you. Uh, so that's what I've done. Like I said, there's 140 recommendations here. There's an awful lot to go through and unfortunately you have not been able to read the report yet. Um, I will take questions, but I want to focus the questions on information that is in the report or I can tell you if something's in, you can read it later on. So if you have any questions, I'll start with the commission First is any commissions for you folks? Then questions for you folks? We should take those before we go to the the other side. Uh, certainly. Uh, good afternoon. So first and foremost, thank you. I appreciate the presentation. I look forward to having an opportunity to substantively read, uh, and digest the report. Um, I have a question in terms of methodology. Um, you spoke, uh, a little bit about the process from a global perspective. I'm curious if you could talk to us a little bit about the standards that you applied, um, as part of this review. So a couple things. One is, um, we came in with an open mind. So, uh, we did not have an objective that we had to meet. The objective was simply, we want you to look at our fire and EMS from the top down and make recommendations of what we can do to improve the department. So that was our mission. From that mission, we started off with collecting a bunch of data and that data gave us a lot of questions. We were able to come in and speak to the management of the fire department as well as the firefighters, the union, the admin staff has been fantastic and be able to say, we have a question about this. I'll get you the facts and figures. And I gotta say very impressed. Usually it's within a day, it's sitting in my email. Uh, so we take all of that stuff and put it all together. We look at it from a, a perspective of we have national fire protection association standards. That's where that 14 firefighters come in. We looked at everything from, uh, the, the, the norms that we see out there that are happening in the fire service world across the country, and where does Westfield fit into this, which is why we chose the, uh, cities to do the comparisons to, we can't compare you to a small town. We can't compare you to the city of Boston. It's, it's apples and oranges and we can't do that. So taking things that are similar is what we did the comparisons against and, but we always fall back on what the standards are. So the NFPA is the largest of all of the, uh, fire standards that we follow, and those are what we would compare them to, uh, for staffing. That pretty much answer or are you looking for something? Yeah. No, thank you. I appreciate it. Okay, Great. You have more questions? Let's go ahead. So, uh, you were discussing that when it comes to turnover for firefighters, um, did you make any specific, uh, suggestions in the report? And I haven't had a chance, I apologize to, to look at the whole report, but, um, as it relates to the civil service, um, mandate at, at which is, you know, currently, uh, what, what the city has. So the only thing that we talked about for civil service was strictly the fire chief's position. Um, that was the only thing we delved into civil service. But as far as, um, hiring of new hires go, there's always an active list. It's just pulling the list, finding out people come in and sign the list to be able to be, uh, started through the process. But we need to look at what that process is and try and shrink that process down wherever we can to get that potential candidate on board and not lose them to another community. That's, especially the non-civil service communities. Non-civil service communities are able to turn new hires in a week to 10 days from the day of application to the day they're on board in the civil service world, it could take you three or four weeks, um, on average I guess, or longer to be able to get them through the process. In the meantime, they're looking elsewhere and they're gonna land a job. That's a non-civil service job when there is many, many non-civil service departments out there for the same pay, if not better pay, and the same, um, environment that they're gonna work in. So they're moving elsewhere. So the whole thing with civil service is the length of time that it takes to get a new hire on board and whatever. We can shorten that up. You should look at doing, it's, it's, that's the biggest, that's the biggest problem. People are going to be looking. And, and, and the other thing that we're seeing a huge turnover of firefighters is people leaving one department jumping to another department, lateral transfers. Um, some of it's the grass is always greener on the other side until they get there and find out, oh, I was probably better off where I was. You can't help that. But I think the people within the department, if people have a report, it's not always about the money anymore. It's about feeling part of a department and feeling that you're getting treated right. The people that you're working with are, uh, part of your family and they work well together. That's more what people are looking for than just the bottom line dollar. Um, I'm not saying there aren't people out there that aren't looking to move because they can get paid more elsewhere. That certainly is the case as well. Uh, you're not gonna fix that. But as far as the whole recruit retention problem, it is a nationwide problem and there is no magic bullet to fix it. I'm gonna withhold any questions on my part. Uh, chief, would you like to ask any questions at this time before I open it to the public? No, I, I've already, uh, had an opportunity to talk to Mr. Houghton, um, with all of my questions. Uh, and I just want to say, uh, thank you to Mr. Houghton and to, uh, Brian Duggan who, uh, worked with our department to get this done and try to move us into the future. Thank you very much, sir. You welcome. Great. Terrific. Alright then. At this time if there are any questions of Mr. Houghton, I'd like, uh, anybody who likes to be able to do that, but because of the, uh, recording, I would ask you to come forward and use the microphone at the uh, day there if you'd like to ask any questions at all. And remember, these are questions of Mr. Houghton, not of the Fire Commission. Some people know how to explain themselves. So like I said, we, we only touched on the, the, the ones that we had pulled out and there are a total of 140 recommendations that are in this thing. And like I said, there are some that you're not gonna agree with and that's okay. But majority of them, we hope that you agree with you, hope that you guys will embrace and work with the, uh, the city and like I say in the management of the fire department, um, to move this department forward. Um, this, you certainly got a great department, but we can always do better and our hope is that we'd be able to call things out and help you do better. So we should ask you if you have any questions. Very Good. Alright. Having heard no other questions and no other comments, I will, uh, ask for a motion to adjourn. So moved second. If I could have a roll call, vote on that, please. Commissioner Jeffrey Su or I'm sorry, Brian Sutton. Yes. Commissioner Jeffrey Tramp. Yes. Commissioner Jeffrey Siegel. Yes, We are in adjournment. Thank you very much everybody.