City Council Budget Work Session Transcript – 02/08/2017 Title: ATXN 24/7 Recording Channel: 6 - ATXN Recorded On: 2/8/2017 6:00:00 AM Original Air Date: 2/8/2017 Transcript Generated by SnapStream ================================== [9:10:25 AM] >> Mayor Adler: We don't have a quorum, but I'm going to let them start talking in the absence of that. And while I think we could -- >> Houston: Thumb's up. >> Mayor Adler: While I think we can actually convene the meeting without a quorum, so long as we don't take action, we're going to hold that pending further conversation, but we are going to just start the conversations that we have. Before we start did you want to say something? >> I did. Thank you, mayor and councilmembers. We had our first department review with you last week. That was emergency medical services. Today we have the fire department before you. And we listened to your comments last week. We've tried to adjust and iterate today's presentation and materials for you. I'm going to ask Ed van east Austin know to go -- Ed van eenoo to go through what's in your packet. I think there is some detailed budget information in there as well as some policy discussion that we're missing from last week. I'll let him walk you through what's actually in the new packets. The other thing that we're doing today is we've asked the directors for future presentations to contain their presentation to 20 minutes so that there's more opportunity for the council to ask questions. Understanding that today we'll go through some policy issues with you. We don't think we'll answer those questions today, but remember that there are two meetings. One in end of April and one the first of may, and that's when we would expect that we could bring back a more full discussion of those policy issues. So we're just introducing those today, but feel free to answer any -- ask any questions that you would like. Let us know if this material is meeting your needs. If it's not what else we need to provide in future [9:12:26 AM] presentations. But thank you. Ed, if you can walk us through the material. >> Mayor Adler: And that's helpful. The three things I would reiterate on that is the first thing is we're trying something new here. This is at the height of the iterative process. Every week we'll learn more and we'll learn what better to do next week. And the hope inc. At the end of these meetings we'll really know how to do it -- we will have learned a lot and know whether or not we need to do this again next year or whether we don't. The second thing is again the purpose of this is in part because when we get to the budget process in last couple of years, the newer members of the council least, felt like we really didn't have appreciation for the overall budgets of the departments, that we were only dealing with the changes from last year and didn't really get an exposure to what the other 98% of what the budget was. This is really an opportunity for the council this time when we go through the budget process to have some greater feel that we know more than just that two percent, that we actually reach down and see things. It also gives a context when staff comes back with contracts to us as they do, and there's this whole list of contracts for people to say wait a second. I know what this is because it's not just coming out of left field, it's actually part of the budget -- the other 98% that I really hadn't seen before, and now I get a chance to see it. And then the other thing that this has done as the manager just indicated, is the opportunity for us to talk about some of the base policy positions that are the drivers of the budget that we spent for us to be able to talk about those things and learn about them. For example, today we'll be talking about the policy to have four people on every piece of equipment. That was a hotly contested issue 10 years ago. [9:14:27 AM] And it's part of the policy now. But just to understand those things that drive the budget. And then the hope is that following these, paced on the conversation we have, or follow-up on the councilmembers after these, going to Ed or going to Elaine is to say when we actually sit down and do the budget we want to come back to this policy issue or that policy issue and actually run through what alternatives might be or other things might be associated with them. So it is all of those things. >> Houston: Mayor? And I want to thank the city manager and all of the department staff for going -- being so pleasant, helping us go through this iterative process. You all are always trying to do it and trying to make us get cleaner and cleaner about what our asks are. I appreciate that. >> Good morning, mayor and councilmembers. Ed van eenoo, deputy chief financial officer. I want to walk you through the voluminous information we gave to you on Friday and we gave you more information on Tuesday just so you have a sense for what's available and what we're going to cover and what we're not going to cover. The first thing is you should have something that looks like this that says E.M.S. Line item budget detail. So we met with E.M.S. Last week and we didn't provide you this line item detail, but councilmember Garza requested it so we're going to start providing some line item budget information to the council with these packets. So this E.M.S. Packet of information you could just put into your binders with your E.M.S. -- Under the E.M.S. Tab, just additional information related to emergency medical services. There are actually two versions of it, but they all add up to the same numbers. So there's one sheet that looks at line item detail at the activity level, but rolled up by the category, [9:16:28 AM] so there's just one number for wages, just one county for contractuals and -- one number for contractuals and commodities. And one sheet is even more detailed. It break them out into different account levels. When you say line item details, there can be various levels of that, so we're giving you a higher up level and a lower level of the line item detail. So that's one piece of information. The next is, and you can see it up on your screen there, it's the Austin fire department's department review presentation. This is really intended to be an overview presentation. That's what chief Kerr is going to go through in a minute here, just to give you a better sense of what the fire department does, how they operate, some of the key programs and activities that they provide to the community, performance measures, that kind of overview. Following that were then these activity detail sheets. This is a thing that's totally new. We've never done this before, and it seemed like council liked the format. We're trying to provide more information about the department, but in a pretty readable, accessible manner. So we've taken the department, broken it down into various activity levels of information, and that's there for your background and information. As we did last week, we are not planning on walking you through all those many, many pages of the activity details, but certainly if you have any questions about the information that's in there, let the chief know and I'm sure she will be able to help you. The thing we sent out Tuesday -- so one of the things we heard from council is this is great information. It's a lot of information. Can you help us distill it down to kind of what are the key topic areas that we should be discussing as a council, and that's what this item that we sent out on Tuesday is our attempt to do that, taking all these activity detail sheets, taking the overview presentation and saying, do you know what? There's really six or seven topics that council really probably should chew on a little bit. There may be others, but from staff's perspective these are some of the things we really wanted to make sure you had an opportunity to discuss. [9:18:29 AM] In the future starting this Friday, we'll include that distilled version of the information with the packet. So this Friday you will get all of this at once for the police department. So that's -- if there are any questions about the information that we've provided you, I think it would be a good time to ask me now, otherwise I'll turn it over to the chief to go through her overview presentation. >> Mayor Adler: I think it looks real good. And after the meeting last week -- where we had a wonderfully complete presentation by the chief of E.M.S., but it also took up a lot of the time that we had. We urged everybody to make sure that they reviewed this material at some level. While you're going to go through it, it's going to be gone through at a level where it's assumed that people have at least had a chance to take a look at it. That doesn't stop anybody from asking a question or if anybody wants to have a more in-depth view or review of this, all they have to do is ask staff, Elaine to get that, and everybody can have however complete and detailed go-through as anybody would individually want. Okay. Ed, thank you. >> Okay. My turn, right? >> Mayor Adler: Your turn. >> I will do my very best to keep this part of it brief. I know it's 20 minutes and I certainly talk faster than Ernie does, and I don't think I have as much detail in this presentation. So just to start with, just to give you an overview of who we are, first the Austin fire department's mission is that the Austin fire department is committed to creating safer communities through prevention, preparedness and effective emergency response. And you will repeatedly hear prevention, preparedness and response throughout the presentation. You will see it in your business plan. You will see that we use that mention to prepare our budget as -- that mission to prepare our budget as well. [9:20:29 AM] So on the first slide, who are we? We're 1150 sworn members with 106 civilians that provide services from 53 work sites. We work on five different work shifts. And most of our operations are 24/7. We have 106 fire apparatus. And I think just some of the things that are worth mentioning here are almost 82,000 city incident responses. And that means that 82,000 times there was a call for help. It doesn't mean the number of units that rolled. It's 82,000 times there was a call for help. And look at that number and a compare it to 56 on the job injuries. That's a phenomenal rate. So I just want to -- I want to have you compare some of these numbers about who we are. Our response times, our response is 33% to fires, rescues, hazmat incidents and other type of calls, but 67%, or the largest percent of our call volume, still is related to emergency medicals. We are very concerned with our fire inspections and our plans review as well as our investigations. And our employee health. And that 56, that reflects how we take care of our employees and there will be some further information about that later on. And as you can see we have 11 auto aid partners. And I can explain to you what that is a little bit later on as well. Our public education, just one thing I want to tell you real quickly, is our goal was 2500 smoke alarms in '16 and we only exceeded that by 33. We've made our goal 3,000 for this current year, and just a couple of weeks ago we had a canvas that we worked with the American red cross and we canvassed [9:22:30 AM] 600 homes. We installed 282 smoke alarms in 173 homes. So that's 173 families that will be safer because they have working smoke alarms. So I just wanted you to hear those numbers because they're really important. And we prepare for floods and wildfire, and like I said, we work with our regional auto aid partners. And then we have a short video and I don't know how I make that work. Under five minutes. [♪Music playing♪]. >> False alarm, 3602. >> Engine 36 is out. We've got a single-family residence. We've got fire showing from the roof. >> Fire command, this is going to be a defensive fire. [Sirens]. Ler [♪music playing♪]. [ Music playing ] [9:25:08 AM] >> False alarm. Engine 24, engine 17, 17. >> 17 is out. Apartment complex, a fire on all three floors. >> We have fire overhead. >> Going very slow. >> This is a defensive fire. 17, you can hold it up at the roof. >> Heavy fire on the outer floor. >> I can honestly say after 27 years in the fire department, it's just one of those jobs that you can't really wait to get here. >> It's a real honor to be able to serve the community. We respond at people's worst times and hopefully we are there and we make a difference and we make things better when people are having a really bad day, and that makes me feel very, very proud and honored to be in that kind of position to help people in that way. >> I do believe with all my heart that being a firefighter is one of the most rewarding professions that anyone can have. Each and everyday you go to a job you have the opportunity to be a hero. >> To be a part of this team is an honor. >> It allows us to be the person that comes there to try to mitigate that situation. To try to help them and ease their pain. >> The thing that I like most about this job is the camaraderie and the teamwork. >> And I love being a part of a team like that. It's the kind of support you get you can't find anywhere else. >> I think most firefighters are wired very similar in that we really like going out and helping people. We like the idea of showing up and being able to make things better. >> I just can't even begin to imagine doing anything [9:27:09 AM] else with my life. I love being in the fire service. And if you're going to do it anywhere, do it in the city of Austin is the best place. >> The job is an opportunity to make a difference in a person's life. It's a very exciting job. It's also a job where you can make an impact that will stay with you for the rest of your years. And that's invaluable. >> >> Mayor Adler: Hold on a second. We have a quorum of people in the room so I'm going to convene this meeting at 9:28. This is February 8th of 2017. As I said, 9:28. This is the session that we scheduled to talk about the fire budget. So we'll proceed with that. Thank you. >> You're welcome. So I did say we were going to see the words prevent, prepare and respond. Throughout the presentation you will see it again and again, but our prevention side of it is not only the plans, review and inspections, but it's special event permitting, it's fire investigation, it's the special events, all those type of things. And then in the prepare, it's not only training of our cadets and our incumbent firefighters, but it's the public education and awareness. I have a saying that everybody has to do your part. In order to create a safer community, I have to have the community be part of that. We can't do it all for everybody. And then we do prefire planning for wildfires, for floods, active shooter, and finally on respond, efficiently and effectively to emergencies. And that includes response times. Our goal is 90% of the time the first unit will be on scene in eight minutes or [9:29:09 AM] less. We want to confine the fire to the room of origin and that's 85% of the time that's our goal. We aren't there, but what does that mean? And I think this is important that you understand what that means. If there is a strip mall and the fire occurs in a business in the middle of the strip mall and we confine the fire to the room of origin, that means within hours the buildings and the properties and the businesses that are on either side of that fire area are back in operation. That means there's no loss of revenue, there's no loss of tax revenue, so it means a lot. It's an important metric for us. And part of that is partnering with our emergency service districts, and we spoke to you recently about a partnership that we're trying to even continue to build upon. How we operate, you heard the mayor mention a little earlier this morning about four-person staffing, that was a council resolution and it's a national standard that allows us to meet the osha standard of two in and two out. And that means when two people go into a structure fire, two people are outside with another hose line prepared to go in and assist should they be needed. And that includes -- that four-person staffing includes all of our apparatus and our special operations vehicles. Sworn call center. We dispatch for the entire county for all 14 esds and it really does provide a better seamless way of doing business and that's what allows us to be so successful with our auto aid agreements. Obviously it's a 24/7 operation and it's important when you have sworn members in there because they can provide immediate guidance to the caller and they also provide that area of expertise to the [9:31:10 AM] firefighters when they're on scene. And an example might be a sworn dispatcher gets a call and the caller says, there's smoke coming out of my ceiling here. Should I move the tile and look and see? And the firefighter knows that moving that tile might introduce air, which would create a backdraft, or a flashover. Where a civilian wouldn't know that because they're not trained in that method of technique and tactics. And then you will see there that we arrive on scene more than not for medical calls that are in nature. And again, 67% of our calls are medical. And the reason we're on scene first is because we're more strategically located. And then quick on the department budget overview, I think the things that are important here is the big red pacman is fire emergency response, and that's as you can see 70.3% of the program budget. Our budget this year was approved at almost $192 million, and as I mentioned we have 1150 sworn, 106 civilian. And our revenue streams are very small for the organization. Mostly tax supported, but we have some fees coming in, but those are from like plans review, special permit events. And in some cases those just merely pay for the services that we're providing. And then aviation abia pays us to provide the service at the airport. And then a little more on our department overview, we've increased the number of ftes from 64 in 2016. And you can see in the chart [9:33:11 AM] the fy15 budget increased tremendously, by about $27 million. And that's really because the safer grant, which is staffing for adequate fire and emergency response provided us 36 positions to get to that four- person staffing. That grant expired and the funding expired in 2015 and the city continued to keep those firefighters employed and assumed the costs for those 36 positions. And those cost allocations were departments were then charged for things like I.T. And some of those other things that we get from other city departments. So it looks like we had a big increase, but technically we didn't add a whole lot of items. I think the thing that's important is 96% of our budget is no discretion. Little to no discretion on how we spend that. So 96%. That leaves us four percent of our budgets to have any discretion with at all. And I think the other thing that's important is that yellow and green line they show the gap between the authorized sworn positions and the filled positions. And it shows you how our vacancies have increased. And I'll talk about that later on and explain to you why that's happened. The next slide shows our firefighter vacancies and the vacancy projections. And what what that line is is the number of firefighters and then the events that help either bring that down or then the line goes back up again as to the number of vacancies that we have. You can see when we graduated class 117 and 118, they went down and started trending back up. You can see we added the shady holly station, and the numbers trended back up. We are graduating class 119 on the 17th of February. [9:35:14 AM] The date, 20th of March I believe it is. And those two classes will help us bring down the vacancy rate, but then you will see it will go back up again because we continue to have people leaving the organization due to retirements. We're recruiting now for the written exam, which will be in may 24th and 25th, and that will result in classes 122 and 123. And our retirements increased from four per month to about six per month between '15 and '16. So you can imagine that the number of people leaving the organization in a will seven month period, which is what it takes us to have a class, so we have to have bigger classes and we just have been unable to do that just because of our classes are smaller, we have department of justice regulations that we've been trying to meet. So that has hindered us as well. I do want you to know that we're watching the impact of the vacancies on our current budget. We're working with the budget office to address some of those challenges and we will come back to you later and report back to you on the financial impact of the vacancies in the near future. Capital budget. All of these projects were a result of the 2012 bond project. The onion creek fire station, which is down south, is public works is forecasting that it will be ready to be open in the spring of 2018. And then some of our facility modifications included lockeroom phase 5, and that is projected to be December 2017, to be finished. There are six stations in that phase. And then we did a number of fire station driveway replacements, and as I said, the two entrepreneurs drill towers, we have one on Shaw lane and then the second over on pleasant valley by the longhorn dam. [9:37:14 AM] And we did a number of modifications and improvements to those. So our demographic and operational factors, as you know the population in our customer growth continues to increase. Our growth in service territory and trying to maintain that standard of coverage. And I did provide you a larger map earlier so that -- a little easier to see what those colors mean so the dark green and the green we're doing well on and you can see those are in the center city. As you get out towards the periphery you can see the purple. And the purple means that less than 50% of the time we're achieving first unit on scene in eight minutes or less. And in fact, the number that comes out of that is 90 percentile for the purple areas. The first unit isn't on scene until 10 to 13 minutes. That's a big difference and it's a critical kel number. And we have same areas where we need those five stations and we have -- this has been part of our horizon issues for a long time. The little yellow dots indicate where we believe the stations need to go in order to bring those purple areas back down into at least Orange or even green. We are challenged with our diversity in the organization and we are going to continue to work through that in regard to our recruitment and testing process. And the one thing I do want to point out is that in our female population we have 7.3% females in the fire department. That's more than twice the national average. So in one area we are successful. It's not good enough, just like our other areas are not good enough either. >> Pool: Can I ask a quick question. I'm sorry, because I wanted to pay attention to the [9:39:15 AM] demographics information. But right before that you were because us where the -- per the resolution where the new fire stations would be. Can you also kind of generally point out to us where the two stations with esd 4 would be? >> I'm looking to see if they're on that map. So if you look on the purple area all the way to the west it says 3207. >> Pool: In the bend. >> And then the other one is all the way -- it's probably on the other side of sh 130. It's way east. >> Pool: So it's not on the map. >> Pool: No, 130 is on the map. Is it where the 1303 is? The 290. >> Houston: No, it's on 969 in Austin's colony, which is not shown on this map. >> Pool: Further south, thanks. >> We can provide you maps that have our stations, that have the esd stations and we're happy to make sure we get those to you. >> Houston: So while we're stopped, this is a quick question. I was concerned about the 1303 because that's close to station 31 and there are no people there. So I'm not sure why the call time. That's an undeveloped kind of property off of there. It's being developed, but it hasn't -- that's where wild horse station is. You guys can talk to me after the fact because I don't know why it would be that long. >> Okay. We will get that to you. Then I think our cadet hiring in the U.S. Department of justice is focused on the consent decree and I do want to make a point here because many of the councilmembers weren't here when we approved that consent decree in the city and went into that with the department of justice. And they did find that there was no evidence of discrimination against individuals, just that the [9:41:16 AM] process that we had made it statistically less likely for African-American and hispanic candidates to be successful. We did implement a priority hiring class, and those two classes will be graduating one in February and one in April. >> Garza: I have a question. I'm trying to understand the demographic and operational factors, service delivery impacts. And then why is cultural diversity throughout the region, why is that on there? >> I'm sorry, I couldn't hear what you said. >> Garza: Why is cultural diversity throughout the region on this? I'm -- I don't understand the connection. >> So not only do we have diversity within the city, but the diversity within the region. And in some of our mutual aid agreements and some of our process that we use in regard to our automatic aid agreements. >> Garza: Okay. >> So just trying to be cognizant of that and make sure that we're paying attention to it, and that we're trying to make sure that we encourage a diverse workforce at all ranks in the organization. >> Garza: So that was my next question. There's efforts to encourage diverse workforce at all ranks. What are those efforts? >> So as you may or may not know, we're very confined by our collective bargaining agreement as to how we can promote individuals. And so we are working with doing a lot of one on one, mentoring and relationship building for individuals, and particularly at the executive level. I'm trying to work through those things. We're also -- some of that we changed was through negotiations is getting both the captains and the battalion chiefs processed [9:43:16 AM] and promotion processed. We've been able to make sure that that is an assessment center instead of just a strict 100-question written test. So that has improved the diversity. And I know that chief Dodd mentioned just the other day of our fire specialists. 40% of the fire specialists were minority candidates. >> Garza: And I understand there's restrictions for civil service and promotions, but you have the ability to appoint positions and it's -- my understanding that there's been a couple of opportunities to appoint qualified minorities to executive positions and those people were passed up. So that's a big concern. We shouldn't just -- if it states here there's efforts to encourage the diverse workforce at all ranks, and I've heard that diversity in general, but in the upper ranks has decreased under your tenure, that's a big concern for -- I would hope for our entire council because every level needs to reflect our city. And I hope that we can have a further conversation about that because it's important. >> I would be very happy to have that conversation with you. I have a strategy and a plan, and you're right, I do have the right to appoint at the division chief and the assistant chief level. And there were no qualified minority appointments that were bypassed in this case. In fact, I did appoint an hispanic person to the division chief and I'm working on preparing some of our other minority individuals to step up to that next level. >> Garza: Okay. I've heard otherwise from the local, but we can have that conversation later. >> I'd be happy to have that conversation. >> Mayor Adler: And just [9:45:16 AM] to put a postscript on that because I think we've all heard that concern and maybe there's a way to objectly look at it. If we can look at the opportunities that have have happened in the last several years in terms of when there was a discretionary decision that was being made or an opportunity and whether that opportunity was available and whether it was -- we were able to realize it or not realize it. Again, no one is wanting to end the discretion. We're real lucky and fortunate, goes beyond luck to have an incredibly safe community, so a lot of what's happening has to be dead on right because so many things are working on well. But if we could have that kind of more objective kind of look at it, I think that would be helpful, I think when the opportunities existed and when they were realized so we could scan over a period of time on how we were doing, just with an objective analysis, I think it would be helpful. >> Houston: Mayor? >> Renteria: I also have a concern, especially being born and being a native austinite. This has been an historic example of, you know, it's always the minorities that we're just that close to it, but we can never get to it. And it's been happening here for -- especially in the fire department, since I've been living here. We have worked very hard, even in the years back, of trying to, you know, break that glass ceiling for minorities in the fire department. We finally did that, but we still seem to not reach that point. And I had conversations with y'all before on that issue, and I hope that, you know, we can reach that level, especially before I leave Austin and, you know, pass away or whatever. I would like to see that [9:47:16 AM] happen. >> Mayor Adler: All right. Let's go ahead and continue and try too work our way -- Ms. Houston? >> Houston: I just want to remind my colleagues and for the new members, there are two programs in town that are very diverse. One is pass the torch, which I go to their graduation every year. Very diverse group of people who have -- are committed to learning about the fire service and going through some of the trainings. They do that on their own on Saturdays. It's a volunteer program. And that at the Lyndon baines Johnson high school at the liberal arts science academy we also have a -- to help train young people. And for some reason we've never been able to -- and very diverse again. Never been able to get those young people into a pipeline. And I keep talking to the fire chief about how do we do that? I don't know whether it's through the collective bargaining process. I don't know where -- we can't help these -- they come and they train and they get certified, but they can't go anywhere. So it's -- we have opportunities to do very -- and we're talking about Asians and folks from Africa. I mean, extremely diverse groups. If you see these young people you would be amazed at the folks who are there, but for some reason we can't get them into that pipeline so they have at least a point to be able to get into the fire academy. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. >> Tovo: Mayor, can I say something? Actually, I'm glad you brought that up, councilmember Houston, because I was interested in asking a question about the academy and if you want to talk about it later that would be fine too. But the city used to provide some more financial support for it than we do now. It's my understanding that that was -- I can't remember what the shift was a few budgets back, but it does seem like a really good opportunity to encourage young people to consider it. As I remember the data, it was -- there was also some [9:49:20 AM] -- my memory of it was that the data was lacking to show whether those young people went into fire services in other areas. There wasn't longitudinal tracking so they graduated from high school and became firefighters in other municipalities. We didn't necessarily get that information back. So it seemed to me that was one of the concerns about the program. As she said, it wasn't necessarily pulling people into our fire fighting force. >> And councilmember, that's correct. The lbj academy, we actually have hired two graduates of the lbj academy, but again, there have been a lot of academies that we've gone through, so a lot of kids have gone through that program. And part of it is that we don't get the direct employment pipeline as was described out of these programs. The school districts all value in continuing in this program and has continued it. And Austin firefighters tend to do -- to be the instructors out there. So the program looks very similar, but you're correct as far as the funding for it, that the city did -- we did pull back from that piece of it. >> But as he stated, I think the important part to realize is that the program still remains exactly the same, and probably many of the same instructors. It's just that the aid assumed the financial responsibility for running the program. It was costing us quite a bit of money. >> Tovo: I remember that. It seemed to me a very good investment, though. And I see -- we'll get to it later, I guess, when we talk about the line items in the budget, but to me that is -- or could be viewed as a recruitment strategy and there is money in budget for recruitment. And I think too there might be some other schools that would benefit from it. So I hope that especially since we're talking about budget, I hope that we'll potentially revisit that as a council, whether or not that is an expense that the city should bear, given our knowledge of aid and their budget constraints, and the [9:51:20 AM] potential direct benefit to the city of Austin from those programs. And maybe even consider whether there's another school in another part of town who would be another good candidate for a program of that sort. I know that that's not like an immediate -- those take time. There's a long, long history at lbj, and setting up another one -- >> We did have some of the data that supported the fact that we were not -- it was not a pipeline and we weren't getting a great deal of benefit from the program. In fact, I think a larger percentage of those firefighters were going to Houston. And we have some of those numbers. We would have to go back and pull some of that up, but I think that Ms. Houston mentioned -- >> Houston: And chief Kerr -- >> The city of Houston. >> Houston: But I think the disconnect is there's no way to get them into the fire academy because I don't know why it's easier for them to go to Houston. I've heard those stories as well, but there's something that we could give them a half a point on a test or a point on a test if they took the test, but we are unable to do that. That's where the disconnect -- they have to then complete like everybody else even though they've passed all the certifications. That's something that we'll have to talk about later. >> That's correct. And that would have to be part of negotiations, part of the collective bargaining agreement. But Ms. Houston did mention the pass the torch academy, which is totally supported by the Austin fire department, and it's been pretty successful and we've had a couple of individuals be successful in our process. But again, we don't have a direct pipeline for those. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. >> All right. I think we're on to noteworthy prior council actions. As you can see, we've already talked about four-person staffing. One of those actions was also providing comparable lockeroom facilities, and I did talk to you about that. And I think it's important that if we want to continue to [9:53:21 AM] increase the number of women in our organization, part of that is having facilities that are equitable and having a workplace where everybody has the opportunity to go to the bathroom. You know, it's as simple as that. We have the ask for five additional fire stations and that was another resolution. And I did show you the map previously that showed the location of where those fire stations need to go. And then finally, there was a resolution about providing the fire service to esd 4. And I think it was last week we came to you and gave you a briefing. And we will be back to you asking you for a vote to allow us to continue with execution -- negotiation and execution of a contract. Some of our key indicators, you'll see that the blue bars, as that number goes down, which is the number of emergency incidents where we arrive on time so that 83% should be 90 percent. So any 83% of the time we're in there eight minutes or less. And you look at the number of the percent of fires confined to the room of origin and you will see as our response time percentile goes down, so does our ability to confine fires to the room of origin. And that just means that we have to be there faster in order to make that happen. And the staffing is also a part of that. And then I think the other part of this graph has to do with as the number of smoke alarms that are installed go up, you'll see that the number of unintentional fire deaths has gone down. Now, I do want to make a comment about 2016. It says five, but actually there were only three that died in structural fires. And that -- the other two were in vehicles. And the reason I kind of [9:55:22 AM] ask why do we bother reporting that? And my research and development analyst said, remember the pinto? And that if they hadn't collected the data we would have never known that the pinto was unsafe at any speed, correct? So that's why we collect that data, but important to note that our structure fire fatalities were at three last year. And my goal is to make sure that we get that to zero. Zero fire deaths is the goal. All right. So our horizon issues. I'll go through those quickly. As you know, inadequate facilities and the need for additional fire stations. I do want to say that -- I'm just going to give you a quick overview of some of our stations. The oldest fire station was built in 19085. That makes it -- 1905. That makes it 111 years old. Six of our stations are at least 80 years old. And 68% of all of our stations, of all 47 stations, are at least 28 years old. And you go, well, 28, that's not so bad. But when you think about a structure that's operational 24/7 in the kind of use that it gets, they do need to be renovated, they do need to be -- do some type of maintenance on those. And then finally, phase 5 -- phase 6 of the lockeroom project includes stations, and I'll call these out and it may not mean much, but 2, 9, 10, 11, 12 and 16. The majority of those are at least 80 years old or more. So you can imagine the challenge that we're going to have making those gender neutral, but also the age of the station. I do want you to know that the growth has led us to -- to an increased service demand. You will see that our [9:57:23 AM] response has been that we've added new a little battalions. We went from having six to having eight battalions. This had been a budget ask for several years, at least three, and we were never were able to accomplish that through the budget process. So this past year my decision was that the risk was too high not to make that happen, so I raided battalion chiefs from staff and I put them in operations. So I will be coming back to you asking you for those battalion chief positions so I can put those back in staff to perform the necessary functions that they were performing then. We need to update and replace technology. And some of that is the fire station alerting. And that's related to firefighter health and well- being and the ability to get the calls out in an appropriate manner. And that's -- that costs millions of dollars when you start thinking about that we have to put it in all those fire stations. And then I think the Amanda for our plans review, and that puts us in line with our other functions and other city departments that are using Amanda. We are preparing -- preparing response to critical events. We are doing a great deal and at the forefront of preparedness for both the floods and the wildfire. And I always have said that regional fire service and approach to regional fire service is certainly more effective and is what our community needs. So some selected program highlights that will come along is our public safety wellness center. You should know that it is a national model. And I've already mentioned the need for renovating our existing facilities. Our outreach and wildfire are again, they're national models. In a short period of time we are one of the best practices when it comes to wildfire, our [9:59:24 AM] prevention. I think one important note here is that our plans review, 92% of our plans are reviewed on time. 92%. In 2016. The two years prior we were at 45%. So we've made great gains in that. I think that's a good number for y'all to know. And then I think finally, homeland security and investigations that more and more terroristic attacks are using fire and explosions as a weapon. And we see that more and more in the terrorists publications. And those are the kind of things that don't take a whole lot of people. And they can be individuals. So we have got to start to put some of our efforts and our preparedness into those areas and make sure that we're not losing sight of that. And then I'm going to hand this over to assistant city manager, to introduce our topics for consideration. >> Thank you, chief. And, again, mayor, council. So, the chief has gone through an overview of her department. And what we tried to do in response to some of the feedbook that we heard from last week is distill the items sprinkled throughout your presentation that she's brought up in terms of the program highlights that she only touched on that helps support her effectiveness out in the community and delivering fire services as well as some of the items that were in there that the budget office and I put on this slide for you to suggest that these might be topics that would interest you, and certainly not limited to these, but what we also tried to did is provide one or two slides behind each of these topics to inform you about what is behind them. I think the mayor, asked, as you [10:01:25 AM] go through these, think about what you might want to know more about that would be topics. That is in the April time frame, as we've gone through all of the departments. With that, I'll turn it over to you to see where you would like to spend your time. A lot of this, in this process, is just to learn. I know these issues are issues that prior councils know really well. And I don't, and probably some of my colleagues don't as well, so, a lot of it is just education, and I began looking at the horizon issues, which are on 13, and have come to us. I think at this point, we understand the inadequate facilities that we have and the need to get there. I think everyone wants to ensure the gender equity and availability, in the areas. I think that we know that you've been trying to get the battalions, and you had to raid in order to get those done. Obviously, we're -- the whole city is trying to push technology, and get on the same system, and that's -- van one of these seems to be critical needs. We talked about the wildfires, and the efforts that were put toward that, and the coordination, so, a lot of what we have to do, I think, is to take a look at competing priorities, and figure out what is the -- what are the most important things to have happen, and are there ways to be able to realize them, in order to make sure that we're hitting things that we should be hitting. So, that's where I'm coming from, in the questions that I ask. So, let me begin with the foreperson staffing question. Just to ask questions about [10:03:27 AM] that. You say 67% of the calls that are made are medical or fire call, is that right, because 67% are medical. What are the other 33%? >> So, the other 33% are fire, hazardous material, and any other type of call that we might make, so -- but the 67% are medical. >> Medical as opposed to fire calls? >> That's correct. >> There are also calls that are ems calls, potentially. What is the difference between a fall medical call and ems medical call? >> There is no difference. So, you know, a fire medical call, it's the same call that ems are also responding to. Now, there are some situations where, like, on vehicle accidents, for example, that we may be able to arrive on scene first, and they're not needed, and we can wave them off, and they may do the same for us. But there's no difference between a person calling 911 and saying I'm having chest pains. That same call goes to the fire department and it goes to ems. >> Do we have ems and fire that responds to the same call? >> Yes, we do. >> That is my understanding as well. Is there anything to be done from an efficiency standpoint, in terms of how we platoon, or manage those calls, so as to not have ems and fire both arrive for the same medical call, or is it important that they both arrive for the same call? Which goes he separately, and to the broader question, should there be some greater measure of consolidation between fire and [10:05:28 AM] ems, or is there a different way to do platooning, or is there anything there to be done better? >> Mr. Mayor, I can answer. We are always looking at the way we do business, and a couple things we did, we did reduce a number of calls that fire went on, on the priority threes from ems, basically by analyzing the data on what is happening on the majority of calls. If ems is within five minutes of being on scene, fire is not being dispatched. At the same token we're looking at vehicle collisions. I think jasper mentioned this last week. If fire goes on vehicle emergency, and clear off to a higher degree, the ems units come in, we can keep the ems unit in. Now, that doesn't answer the larger question, but we are constantly working within the model that we have, of delivering emergency medical services to gain the efficiencies that we can, because every time we keep a fire unit in service, it's in service for a type of call that is only appropriate to it, like a fire. So, fire ems would not put out a fire. We know keeping our resources in service is vital. So, we are always scrubbing the data, looking for opportunities to tweak, in my words, tweak, tweak our response protocols so we can gain efficiencies, but that's within our current model structure. >> And if I may, mayor, if I may also add, I've had conversations with both chiefs, departments, and we look at how we might best be more effective in delivery of the services. As you heard chief Rodriguez say last week, generally for a code one or two level medical emergency, we need to get the unit that's closest there, and quickest, on scene, and typically, that will be the fire station, as chief Curtis mentioned is typically the closest unit. The reason why we tend to is send both unit there's in this particular case, because advanced life support might be needed in order to stabilize and [10:07:28 AM] get that patient to the hospital, and emt, medic one, emt services, what the fire service currently has and is qualified to. So, it's a combination of team work and depending on the level of, or acuteness, of the medical situation, that we will send both. Or we tried to, through our dispatch system, decide and determine who gets there first, can they call off the other. >> So, part of the question then would go to - - and I don't want to get into operations. I obviously don't know anything about that, and -- but rather than the five minutes, if it's eight minute, if that's the goal, a unit that's within eight minutes rather than a unit that's within five minutes, the broader question I have from council, in terms of support, we fund it as council with the police, a look at that staffing needs that were required. Is there a best practice experts that look at platooning people in terms of modeling that would be expertise that would be helpful to look at, you know, the one two, and three-level codes, in terms of how we platoon people, whether five minute, six minute, seven minute or eight minute is the right effort, that we would take a look at? I just don't know those issues. With respect to the four person staffing. One of the reasons I ask this question, we have parts of the town that it takes 13 minutes to get somewhere, and that puts potential lives in danger and it's a horrible thing to start thinking about. But I put lives in danger if I don't get to those people in 13 minutes, but I can't afford to do that so far, so I'm trying to figure out if we platoon differently, would I be able to then meet some of the other needs? For example, maybe it makes sense to have -- and again, I'm asking this almost Rhett toreically, because I have no basis to ask the question, but if I have a fire station that's [10:09:29 AM] at the perimeter, and it's important for me to have four people on every vehicle, and that fire station that's at the perimeter is the only one responding, because it's at the perimeter, I need four people, if that's what I need, if I have responses that are happening in areas where there is a greater overlap of people, can I -- and I have multiple stations that are responding to them potentially, can I put three people in each of those stations, recognizing that in those rare, but obviously incredibly important moments, when I have a fire, that I can have four people on site, even if they are not all at the same station? In other words, could I be a platooning type question. Because I have the coverage such that I don't need to have four people everywhere, but I can have three people in lots of places that overlap so that I, on any given moment, I have four people on the site. Does that make sense for us to consider giving you additional resources to have a higher level review of platooning best practices or opportunities, or creative thoughts, management and stuff? >> So, there are a number of studies that have been completed in regard to staffing, and the effectiveness of four-person staffing and the need for that. And as a point of reference, when you talk about high priority medical calls, all four people are really needed. We have a process we call pit crew, and it requires four people to initiate and sustain that cpr and to sustain that life-saving activity. In regard to structure fires, the four-person staffing, there was conducted -- a study was conducted by a combination of organizations, but the primary one was the national institute of standards technology, and [10:11:31 AM] they conducted more than 60 full-scale fire experiments that were conducted to determine the impact of crew size and other variables. So, the outcomes were statistically significant in 95% confidence level or better. So I, I want you to know, this isn't rhetoric, this is not like feels-good. These were statistically significant at 95% and found that four person crews operating in low hazard structure fires completed all tasks on the fire ground, on average, 7 minutes faster than two-person crews, and 5.1 minutes faster than three-person crews. So, there's one answer between the difference between four and three. They also found that there's a 6% difference in the water on the fire times between three and four-person crews. So, we can be 6% faster if we have four people on scene. And then the fe I have, is there a way to ensure that there are four people present at the event? My question was, it was not so much, is there a reason to have four-person crews, but is there a different way to achieve that [10:13:31 AM] on site? >> Part of the challenge is the dynamic way emergency responses come in, so, we have four person staffing, we know that one unit is showing up on scene. We'll meet that four-person standard. If we do not have them all on that one company, and we have multiple units that we can say, on a map, they will be responding from here, here, and here, they will roughly show up at the same time so they accomplish the four-person role of the company and additional task, that's only in a perfect static scenario, everybody is sitting at the fire station at the time the alarm comes in. Typically we know they are making always all over town. It's not a perfect scenario where four, five, closest stations respond to that house fire. It is the four or five closest stations that have the units available or units in transit through that area that are available, and because of that dynamic, we can't guarantee we can put the resources like you described on scene to accomplish that goal at a moment's notice. That first engine could be on scene a number of minutes by themselves, not meeting the two and two out requirement, which would prohibit them from entering the structure to do search and rescue. We can't guarantee that second unit. We have three people not able to accomplish that search and rescue task waiting on the second unit to show up. In rural areas that do not have the availability to staff like a city can. That's what they have to do. Thigh have higher fire deaths. That's a risk living in a rural air afterthe state. That's part of the challenge. And again, that makes it difficult. Emergencies happen when they happen. We could have units when they respond. We could have units responding in downtown Austin to assist with an emergency. It's just a dynamic model where [10:15:33 AM] we shift the resources around. That's why the four-person staffing is so critical that we have it on each unit. >> What is the average number of calls per day that stations have? Is there like a general number for that? >> It varies from station to station. 10 to 20 at our busier stations? >> 10 to 20 calls a day? >> Absolutely. And then at our slower stations it's less than that. >> Okay. I have more questions but I'll pass it to other people. What is the difference between an unintended death and intended death. The chart is number of unintended depths. >> Because they weren't intentional. In other words, we had one where the woman set her husband on fire, so, that was an intentional fire death. >> Wow. >> Got you. Okay. Thank you. She was really pissed at him, let me tell you. That's exactly what it looks like. There's unintentional and intentional death. How does arson figure into that? Is that unintended or intended death? >> How would arson look at that? >> If it were a fire as a result of arson and somebody was killed, does that get reported as intentional death or unintentional death for purposes of this data? >> It technically would be an unintentional death. >> I'll pass the conch shell. Does sick else want to ask questions? Mr. Flanagan, do you have questions? >> Flannigan: Yes, I have questions. This is a small one. You talk about under prepare for emergencies, active shooter. Can you tell me what active shooter means for the fire department? >> Sure. Active shooter for the fire department. We have a policy, procedures, that we use, and we train with [10:17:34 AM] APD and ems, is also part of that. We all have a role in an active shooter event. So, we had a pulse night club event took place here, the police have a role -- we have a role and ems has a role, so we try to be as efficient and effective as we can, without putting firefighters in ballistic -- putting him in harm, the same thing for ems. >> What is the firefighter's role in an active shooter situation? >> Our role, we go into the warm zone and go in and quickly triage the victims, and many times that means there's two police officers in front of us, two behind us, but meanwhile, the -- we usually don't go into a scene until the shooter has been pushed out, you know, or somewhere else. But we'll go in, and we'll pull the victims out of that zone, bring them out to the cool zone. >> Medical service? >> And we'll pass them off to ems, they in turn will triage, transport. We'll do quick -- sometimes we have certain bandages that we can use that help stop the bleeding you might tourniquet something. And boom we're out of there. Democrat I'll try to move quickly. Slide 10 you talk about five stages of resolution but there's no funding for those excorrect? >> Correct. Democrat of staffing plan, the implication is these new stations don't get built for two years or longer, which is quite you don't have them on the staffing plan? >> Correct. >> Can you tell me the difference between the call center and E me S services we heard last week? >>. >> So, the initial 911 call goes to the call center and that's staffed by civilian, individuals that work for the police department. When they realize it's a fire [10:19:35 AM] medical call, they push that call to fire dispatch. We have 911 call takers. They start taking the call to get the information, and then push it off to the dispatcher, but meanwhile, before it goes too far, it's already going out to the unit that needs to respond. >> Flannigan: So I guess I'll look for the combination of those expenses when we hear from police next. We hear from police next, is that right, Elaine? >> We do. You might want to describe what the communication looks like, if the fire department, ems and police are all on the same floor. They are just sections. We also have a txdot section within that call center. >> Flannigan: It's one call center but they're dividing up the cost into one budget? >> Yes. It's all one facility. >> We're all in one facility. We'd love to take you out and give you a tour so you understand it better. There are sections, like Elaine said are ems. There's a fire section and then there's -- >> Makes a lot more sense now. I understand that. I'm still trying to get up to speed on how some of these departments work. I see battalion chief used a number of times in different ways. Is that a functional title in terms of promotions or all their pay is the same? Like a battalion chief, over a call center to my mind, would be a different level than someone who is responsible for several sections of emergency responders. >> So, the ranked battalion chief, they are all the same. They are all the same rank and all in the same spay scale. >> Flannigan: Okay. >> So a battalion chief could be over a group of stations or battalion. A battalion chief could be the communications battalion chief, which I think you may have been referring to. A battalion chief could be over training and Ed services and they all earn the same amount of money, we do have a staff assignment pay, so if you're working a non-operations job, there is an additional dollar [10:21:35 AM] amount associated with that. And it increases over consecutive year, so, I think the staff pay right now on your first year is a staff battalion chief, you would get an additional $300. >> All right. >> Flannigan: The unintentional fire deaths to me, you made a statement the unintentional fire deaths reduced because of the fire alarms -- smoke alarms. >> Right. >> Flannigan: I don't know that -- we have so few, I don't know that's a claim we can make. It doesn't seem five or six unintentional fire depths is statistically significant metric. It's good to track. We should be going to zero. Zero should be the goal there. But I don't think we could accurately tie that back to an activity. >> I don't know that I could either. I think it's a combination of public education, it's a combination of the smoke alarm, because we do have circumstances where we know that -- and of those three fatalities last year, not a single one had a working smoke alarm. >> Flannigan: Great. Just because you made it about the smoke alarms earlier, I'm glad we had that talk. I had similar questions that the mayor had about the medical call response. In one of the slides you talk about the percent of calls and it says 8.6 percent of calls are fire, hazmat and rescue and another 24% is other. Could you help me understand what other is? A quarter of your calls are "Other." >> Can you tell me which slide you're referring to? >> Flannigan: Slide 20. >> Slide 20? >> Flannigan: Yes. >> Slide 20. >> I can start with that. The fire department is often referred to as the department of last resort. So, a lot of times, when a citizen calls and they have a non- -- non-traditional - - but one of our typical fire, fire, [10:23:38 AM] medical emergency, they'll say something -- I think I heard an alarm going often in my house, I think something is going on. Can somebody come check it out? We check it out. A proverbial cat in the tree. Mrjs don't fit categorically with any other department and fire department tends to respond on those. But the cat in the tree is a little facetious, but it's historical. But a lot of times residents call and they say, my kid's got his pant leg caught in a bicycle, and we'll go there and help them get the child's pant leg out of a bicycle. We do those types of calls all of the time. Citizens have needs. They don't know how to address them and we respond in that capacity. >> When you respond to these 24% of other call times, you are rolling a four-person fire truck? >> We are. They are not always code 3. A lot of times they are code 1 responses. >> But the equipment we're using are the same we use for other types of calls? >> That would be correct. >> Flannigan: That's something, to my colleague, is something worth exploring. If we have a department doing 8.6 of what its title is and rolling the same time of equipment and high- paid qualified staff to people, I think you think about service delivery, that's more in tune to the types of services our community is asking for, and that's something we can talk about as a council later. Also, on overtime, I see that of just wage, not benefits, just wages, that fire department is at 14% of all wages overtime. Ems is 24% of all wages of overtime. I I'm sure some overtime makes a lot of sense in terms of variablity. It's easier to scale up folks in overtime and costs of benefits might make sense to have a certain level of overtime. Bringing on a new person could have training costs, recruiting costs and retirement cost. [10:25:38 AM] Chief, to your mind is 14% the right amount of overtime? How much should we expect to see if we have the number of ftes that you're asking for, if you've been aloe indicated if we staffed up? >> I don't know if I have the answer for 14%. I would like time to get that information back to you. But I can tell you most of our overtime is driven in operations and it's driven by the need that when there's a high vacancy rate and we have 170 vacancies effective probably the end of this month, and so, we back Phil positions or seats on units. Some of our year time is used in M a different service provision. You can see some of that overtime on some of those charts that had to do with Ed services when we had cadets, so we bring in subject matter experts to teach the cadets. We bring in team leaders to work with the cadets. Well, when those team leaders down training, and Ed services, working with cadets for seven months. Somebody has to be back philling their slot at the fire station, so, we pay overtime to back Phil their slot. >> Flannigan: Okay. On -- the mayor kind of touched about, in terms of calls per station, is there data that can talk about the geographic distribution of calls? >> Yes. We can provide that to you. >> Flannigan: I would love to see that. And thank you for the map. I would love to see this version. You alluded to it earlier that included the esds where there's auto aid. >> Yes. >> Flannigan: Do you do auto aid with esds in Williamson county? >> We are not, right now. We are working on a midware software that will connect cad to cad. Right now it's impossible to do auto aid, because their dispatch center has to call their [10:27:38 AM] dispatch center. >> Flannigan: Obviously that's a corner for my district. I have a wholly contained esd with the jollyville fire department inside my district that's geographically very close to station 4 but also to a conversation we had two weeks ago about the off the of annexations. I think this map makes that very clear what that means, when you see there's still a parcel on the furthest north parcel in my district which is the furthest north parcel in my city, still the 11 call time and parcel immediately to the south of that has so fuel calls because it's brand-new home construction. People have not moved in. There's about to be a high school and middle school built there, so, I expect the call volume would increase, especially medical call, given the school, so we will likely be facing high call response times in those areas as well. And I don't think it's any response that all of the high response areas with the exception of maybe district 8 or district 5 are all in the very outer reaches. So, it's not a difficult leap to see the annexation case we talked about leading to the next annexation, would necessarily require building more fire stations. Pp also, it's something I think that's worth talking about other public safety agency, because there are no police stations west of mow pat, for example. I'm also curious about -- there's a lot of great data which you provided and I enjoyed spending the last few hours before the meeting began reviewing it, the number I'm missing, and I see the percent structure fires contained in room of origin, I'm on activity pages, page "a"-5 but I don't see a number about the number of structure fires. >> Okay, we will -- >> Flannigan: Over time, over time. >> Okay. >> Flannigan: Because it's my understanding that new construction has fewer structure fires than older construction, and the rapid growth certainly, [10:29:39 AM] in my district but in many districts there's a lot more new construction than old construction, so I'm interested in seeing how that might tie back to our community relationship and community outreach. Is there a way to tie back educating folks that reduces the number of structure fire, and the number of structure fires compared to the number of structures, which, to me, is a different metric than firefighters per population. That makes a lot of sense on medical calls, but if we are talking about fires, it seems to be more about the number of structures. >> And we will -- you're probably singing the song of, my research and development analyst back there, Christine, so, she's probably taking notes, oh, yeah, I can do this and I can do that. So, we will get that information to you. >> Phenomenal, phenomenal. >> Council, one point of thing, in terms of clarification. The type of construction, type of building structure, you're correct, older structures, most of our fires room and contents fires. That means furnishings, that wouldn't be different new residential construction versus old residential construction. >> Flannigan: Is not the type of newer construction also the materials in the building are more likely to contain the fire to the room it started in? >> Oh, no. Unless there's fire sprinklers in that building -- in that apartment or house, but today's construction, today's construction burns hotter and fast are than before. It has a lot to do with plastics and the way that buildings are constructed, and in regard to -- it used to be, with old construction and legacy type of furniture, and all of those things that were in a house, I think a room would probably flash over in about 24 minutes, and now, today's construction, with our room and contents, it will flash in four minutes and 30-something seconds. >> That's really very interesting. Zp you did reference unless there's sprinklers. >> Right. >> Flannigan: If we're in an [10:31:41 AM] area and I think we might be. Building multi family structures that have sprinklers the buildings are safer. >> Should be. >> Flannigan: That's another thing to consider. Am I going too long? I got more. >> And I tell you, our building codes do require residential sprinklers in multi family houses. >> And one more point, if you're referring to commercial construction, absolutely newer construction is safer, with the fire safety. >> Flannigan: Also multi family is what I was thinking. >> I had a question about the 96% is non- discretionary. But then on the policy -- I can't find that page -- oh, the topics for council consideration, I guess, for example, if we reduce the number of -- it's discretionary to -- this is just an example. Instead of having sworn, sworn people answering the phones at our dispatch, they would be civilians. We could put those people back into the operations, which could cut down on overtime and possibly having to hire later. And that -- isn't that a discretionary decision? >> Actually, it's not. Our staffing in our dispatch center, is actually governed by the collective bargaining agreement and it requires that everybody be a sworn firefighter. >> And does the same go for like wellness and recruiting? >> There's -- there's very few sworn people in the wellness center. But we do have to have, by statue and collective bar gaping agreement, civilians cannot supervise sworn firefighters. [10:33:43 AM] >> So, because I'm concerned about a conversation that -- I'm not saying I know there were just questions to ask. Any conversation about reducing staff or response, should, in my opinion, never happen at the operations level. We should not be trying to find ways at the operations level, when you're talking about the people that are running into the burning buildings and responding to medical calls. I guess I'm trying to flip the conversation, to maybe it's more of where we staff people in non- operations areas. And so maybe that is a way to try to find some efficiencies. I don't think that I agree that there's not -- there has been attempts to try to find efficiencies in medical calls. I remember there was discussion of squads but regardless, if you have a squad responding to a medical call you need to staff that fire engine with four people and that puts that fire engine out of service while those two people are gone responding to a medical call. So, do you think there are areas -- are there areas outside of the collective bargaining agreement where there is discretion on staffing in non-operational areas? >> You know, we'd really have to do a review of all of our staff assignments and staff positions. But we are probably at our lowest number of staff positions. Like I said, I took six -- you know, battalion chiefs out of staff, and, in many of those, there's, again, that idea of supervisory, and it has to be -- firefighters are supervising firefighters. You can't have civilians supervising civilians. We use as many civilians as we can in some areas, like in our air shops. Most of that is -- our P.P. Maintenance and some of those things. Most of those are all civilian. So we do try to use civilians where we realize there's an [10:35:44 AM] advantage. >> Council member, I would like to add, as we -- I'll point to wild fire. That's something new council gave us funding to start a wildfire division. The operational responds needs of the fire department to be represented there, but also the civilian expertise that we knew we didn't have internally in the uniform ranks. We built a division that's a combination of civilian and uniform which we think is efficiently using the funding for that section. >> Garza: And with regards to the collective bargaining agreement, somebody who sat at the table bargaining with the city, there were things built in that contract that the city would ask for. So, when the city would ask for, I don't know, I'm not saying this is how it happened but let's say the city asked for a wellness center. Then the local would come back and say, you can have your wellness center but we need it staffed by firefighters, and so part of those, what are considered non-discretionary, are at some point discretionary. Somebody's making the decision to have that requirement, and to so it's compromise. And so, I think that's where we dig into -- I don't know where we are in the contract negotiation, but maybe that's where we dig into what the city is asking for, and what the city wants to require, and sometimes that's what creates additional staffing, is the decisions that we make during contract negotiations. So -- and the fact that that is such a big part of -- you know, I don't know where this belongs in the -- or where the authority in the charter comes from, but the council oftentimes, when there was an impasse, then the council gets involved in it, because there's an impasse, and -- or, having to catch up and figure out exactly what all of the issues are, so, a lot of [10:37:45 AM] the non-discretionary was discretionary during contract negotiation and it comes up to us later. That's just something that we should all be aware of. And I also wanted -- you said the cat in the tree. That actually is another -- I made that call. It was a cat hanging from the overpass of 290 that turns into mopac. That was the only time I raise zed a stick, was to rescue that kitty. >> Thank you. On slide 20, do you all keep data on the frequent users in -- is that a way that we could triage how -- who we send to those calls, and by frequent user, I'm talking about those homes that we are now licensing and inspecting, but they still -- we run fire ems and we also run police on all of these calls S. When I did my ride out with the police, we were all there, and it was a psychiatric call, and so, do we keep data on those, so that we know that's a boarding home, and we know the population of people that live there, and that's probably an ems call, and not a fire call? >> So, we do, and we do work on this. Remember, we talked about priority calls, whether they were high priority and high acuity or not. Some of the other part of this is that the hardest challenge is that when the call center or 911 takes the call, and they get a report that -- we know it's a boarding home, for example, and we know that the -- maybe it's a psychiatric or behavioral issue, but we really don't know that that's really the problem, so [10:39:45 AM] you can't assume P, by previous history, >> Houston: So, what I would like, chief, is detailed -- everybody else might want this, too. Details of those kinds of homes in the various locations, and how much that costs and what the kind of calls, was it priority 1 or priority 3. Because I think it's important for us to look at the financial impact of the homes that -- it's not about you all, and it's not about the homes. I think it drives to the fact that the state has given the city some unfunded mandates, and the city can't accomplish those, or the mental health authority can't, and so we're using homes that are unregulated and not licensed, and the financial drain on trying to provide services to those folks is pretty overwhelming, the last time I saw it, at Windsor park. It was a pretty big number. Station 18 runs all of the time to those kind of calls. >> And, council member, you remember the council provided funding to a group home inspector and fire marshal rob Beyers is here. I would like to give a real quick report on what your dollars have bought for that. >> So, for our records, we've got 174 inflections that were accomplished in 2016 from the rooming and boarding house inspector. As you and I have sat in some similar meetings in developing this, and the accommodations, as units go out, and they come across stuff, we ask them to pass on to us, and we'll send that inspector out, where appropriate try to interject and make changes. I passed on to the chief there were three separate stories on occasions where there was a room and boarding home that the inspector went out to look at, in coordination with code compliance got them to move back into an area that was appropriate as far as the way they were managing their facility. Installing sprinkler systems, [10:41:46 AM] making sure they are working properly and things like that. Sometimes it's reported by the citizen actually living there. Sometimes it's discovery with the units that responded out to there. All of that, we fund back to the inspector decided to do that and they coordinate with code compliance to work through that process. I can't give you the numbers but 124 inspections are in our reporting system that directly relate to that. >> Houston: I want to thank council for adding that position, because it was much needed. Since 2009 we've been having this problem, but I would still like some data. >> We'll work on that. We'll get that for you. Miss alter. >> Alter: Good morning. I would like information on what is causing the need for so much overtime. I'm trying to understand if this is being driven by city not funding enough spots where there is a recruiting problem generating overtime and I don't know whether you have an answer to that now or it's further data? >> I can give you a very brief answer in regard to that. What has happened is that the number of vacancies have continued to increase, and the size of the classes have been installer, and some of that has to do with the department of justice oversight. And then at the same time, the vacancies are increasing at a much higher rate, so, instead of four people a month retiring, we have six people a month retiring, and that has to do with, they've met their maximum, or their retirement age, their minimum retirement age. At 20 years, they are eligible to retire. At 25 years. So, we have a large group of people that all came in together around the same time. So they are all eligible to [10:43:47 AM] retire and they are taking that option of retiring. So, as they retire, we have to make sure that we have sufficient staffing to cover those retirements. And all of the vacancies are at the firefighter level, so, if a lot retires, for example, we promote to that position, and then you promote the lieutenant, and then you promote to the driver. But the vacancy stays at the firefighter level. We have to, first of all, get larger classes. We have to get more people out. And once we can get to that point, about 30 vacancies is kind of the sweet point. We're always going have vacancies because people are always going to be retiring. Right now we have 170 vacancies. >> Council member, the other thing to remember, is that because of the four-person staffing that we talked about, that's a mandatory staffing level, so we have to back Phil without added time to the firefighter, make sure we have four people in apparatus on every shift. >> Alter: So I go back to reiterate a comment a made at ems. We have goals to help recruit young people and have a more diverse work force and have a need at fire and ems to get trained people in there. That as we're making investments in training programs by the city at large, we always to be thinking about how these could be coordinated across departments, so that we're meeting our own staffing needs at the same time, that we're making these investments that are really important to help these young people or these communities transition to new kinds of employment, and higher paid employment, and so I'd like, as we're seeing some of this data, to understand better how we can make those connections across the departments that are doing that. And to the city manager level, in general, as we're going [10:45:47 AM] through these processes, it would be really helpful when there are large amounts of overtime, to have some data as to what is driving that and where that is going, because I think that's a sign that something else needs to happen, and I would like more data on that, and I imagine that we've already seen it in two departments, that we may see that in other departments as well. Following up on what council member Garza was saying about the 4 percent discretion and 96 percent discretion, I would like to understand better why we're saying 96 percent is not discretionary, and I don't know that that's an answer that I need to hear, but I would like, kind of in writing, something that explains to me, that portion of it. Another thing that I'm curious about, I notice, it seems like it was six years from bond approval until opening a new station for the onion creek fire station, and that seems like a really long time to go from the bond to construction. We have five of them now, you know. If it took six years for each and we can only do one at once, that's 30 years before we got to five fire house, which may be an exaggeration. Help me understand why it it is it takes so long and whether there's things that other departments could be doing to help facilitate the construction process for those fire stations because after all, the fire department is not in the business of building buildings. >> You are correct in all of those bond projects are public works projects, and so, I don't have control over that part of it. We have recently been working with -- more closely with public works. We've gotten some help and some assistance in making that happen. So, it's -- the projects are starting to move along, but you're right. And then there's some, probably that needs to come from the people that are running the bond [10:47:48 AM] projects, that even though the project was approved by the voters in 2012, the money is not necessarily available in 2012. But there were some delays on the -- on behalf of public works in regard to getting this project moving forward and moving more quickly. >> Alter: So at the city manager level, are there efforts to help move these projects along, facilitate that interdepartmental cooperation? >> Yes. In particularly with the fire department. Again there's a little history in terms of the fire stations in onion creek and how they come online and so forth. And projects in the 2012 bond issuance. We placed a greater focus, and working very much closely with both the public works department and capital contracts as well. There are a number of departments we're working very closely, particularly four the phase 5 and phase 6 of the locker room project both which were funded by the 2012 -- phase 6 doesn't have funding. So that's one of the the challenges we have. In any case, we are working more closely and as we go forward, in terms of stations that don't have funding currently that you see on the chart here, there's an effort to recognize that those are important, and how can we prioritize them in a way that helps meet the demand out in the community. >> Alter: Thank you. If I might, I've got two more questions. One is kind of a general data question again for all of these things. But also for fire. I would like to see data on how many of the fdes are earning over $100,000 and a comparison of that number now to appropriate years back. I don't know if that's two, five or ten years. But I would like to have some understanding of, you know, how we're growing in terms of the structure and payments and things. And that might be one measure that would help us to understand. [10:49:52 AM] That better. >> I think it's important to have the numbers that reflect base salary and overtime. But depending, now we're at 170 vacancies, we can get those down in overtime that they will absolutely almost stop. >> Alter: And in the last area, from what I can gather there wasn't much money being spent on wild fire prevention. Where I sit in district 10 we have a lot of worries about wildfire and what happens in district ten and other places at wildfire risk, puts the whole city at risk. So, I would like a drilldown more in wildfire needs and assessment to understand that better, because the data that I've seen says there's something like 37,000 homes at high risk for fire and Austin ranks very high in city standing in terms of risk for wildfire, so I would like to understand what we're doing in the budget and we can have a second understanding of what we do about wildfires. We could be penny wise and pound foolish if we're not doing all we can with respect to preparedness and emergency prevention with regards to fire. >> I'm make sure you do get that information. But one thing I can say, our firefighters are equipped for wildfire. We have ppe. Personal protective equipment. But for all fires not just those stationed out west or in those areas. Every single one of our firefighters is trained, including our cadets. >> There's a certain amount of wildfire activity that just really involves revengs. >> Right. And it does. And we are involved in that, too. We will get that information to you. >> Thank you. [10:51:52 AM] Appreciate it. Mayor pro tem. I have to leave. If I could get a few more questions. >> Mayor Adler: That's fine with me. I think we all have questions for a second-rounder. >> Flannigan: Thank you. Normally I weave my term but I'm jumping in this time. When we talk about fleet maintenance on these vehicles. 3.8 million on the line item budget for preventative maintenance, do we track vehicle depreciation. Are we trucking the cost to the equipment to run these calls? Is there any accounting for, if you run the big fancy fire truck on every medical call, it's costing us this in our equipment costs? Is that tracked anywhere? >> I don't know if I have an answer for that. >> Flannigan: Is that an Ed question? >> Here comes Ed. Sorry. >> Flannigan: I saw you in the back there, Ed. >> So, from an accounting perspective, we appreciate the asset over its useful life. In terms of the budget you're looking at and dollars you're looking at for that slide on fleet costs that's the cost the fire department would pay to the fleet for maintenance of their vehicles. The replacement cost is a whole separate equation. I think the replacement cost on the engines is somewhere in the neighborhood of 12 years. We would replace those apparatus to issuing debt. Or if we have sufficient money in our reserves, we'll draw it from the reserves. >> Flannigan: That was my question. Obviously the answer is more complicated. Is the 12 year time frame because we run them so frequently on medical calls, would the trucks last longer? That's where I'm headed on that thought process. >> We can come back with the information, what the recommended fleet service is. Those kind of things. >> Flannigan: On the activity [10:53:52 AM] pages a-5 you note 618 structure fires in fiscal year '16. On a-9 it notes 3900 fire incidents. If you go back and add up all of the numbers and all of the slides, you end up with .75% of all calls are structure fires. .57%. And, I think to my larger point earlier, we are -- we have a fire department, I think over time, built as a just in case for structure fires that represents practically an insignificant number of calls and effort, and I think there's other ways like ems has done, bringing on motorcycles to think about the types of calls that we're actually receiving, the types of needs that the community actually faces that may be better and cost efficient to serve those needs. Is there a measure of uncommitted time with the fire department as we see with the police department? >> No, there's not. >> Flannigan: Is that because there's no such thing as uncommitted time, or -- >> Pretty much, but -- >> Flannigan: That's what the police department says, there's no uncommitted time either, so I'm -- >> Right. When the police department talks about uncommitted time they are talking about time in a patrol office officer's day that's not attributed to law enforcement activity. As part of our work day that community engagement is factored in. When we do public events that's committed time but that's public engagement. Uncommitted time is like sleeping at the fire station at night. To make like -- that would be committed but they are subject to make a call at any point. We don't register our gap time, I guess, between calls, between job tasks during the day. We don't measure that. That's uncommitted. >> That goes back to the mayor's question of geographic distribution of calls. Again, not to bemaybe labor the point, but if you count up the number of fire stations in my [10:55:53 AM] district it's more than 10% so it's another cost of sprawl that you have a greater number of fire stations and necessarily equipment and firefighters covering an area that doesn't represent that percentage of the city and with the Kenyon creek station, should the funding be identified that would be the self pent district 6 station out of 40-some stations. We're talking about a significant percentage of fire equipment sitting at a district that I would guess, if we go back and look at the fire incident R dense reports that have a very low incidence of fire calls because so much of that district, my district, is recently constructed. And like most districts, it is majority renters, so, it would lead me to believe many of the structures in my district are single family -- multi family structures with sprinkler systems and necessary equipment, et cetera, et cetera. There's a larger thought process to go into that. And then, my last question, is there the -- because the call center serves the esds, is there somewhere in the documentation that shows reimbursement from the esds into the budget? >> There is probably not in here but should be in the budget. We do charge for that. >> Flannigan: Great. It would be useful to see that on slide 6 where we talk about sources of revenue. >> Okay. >> Flannigan: Because I think 191 million includes the full cost of communications, is that right? But we've not included the source of the reimbursements for whatever portion of that. >> Okay. >> Flannigan: I'm done. Thank you. >> I just want to make one comment. You were talking about low use areas, but there is something which we just recently achieved which was an iso fire protection rating of 1. And that means a great deal in regard to commercial interest, and in regard to our economic development, and part of that iso, fire protection rating includes placement of apparatus, not only engine companies but ladder companies, and includes staffing and includes a whole [10:57:53 AM] large number of things, including our water system and all of that. So, you know, sometimes it seems like, well, they don't get many calls over there, why don't you take that station and move it where there's more calls and it's not quite as simple as that. >> Mayor Adler: Mayor pro tem? >> Tovo: Thanks very much. That's interesting. While I was upstairs listening by phone, you what talking about the faster rates building burn more quickly and I was reminded if a video in the budget session that was a real shocker. >> It's a very big shocker. >> Tovo: I don't know if that's circulating. >> It is and I can get it for you, find it and send it to each of your e-mail's so you can see the difference between the two. >> Tovo: I guess, too, because we're having or I'm having a lot of discusses these days about the demolition of older houses and what value older houses bring to us, not just from a -- from a historical -- from the perspective of historical character, in my mind, it's also part of our zero waste and sustainability goals to make sure we're recognizing vetted energy cost in the construction of those older homes, but I wonder - - it would be interesting to me too whether there's a comparison on how fire save some of the older homes are. I think you were talking earlier about the fire items we have in our homes that would be susceptible to fire, but I would be interested in knowing whether older homes are built more fire safe, certainly with regard to apartment complexes and the others we have more provisions now than we once did. Really that's not budget questions, but if you have thoughts on that I would be interested in it. >> Okay. We'll try to provide you some information on that. [10:59:53 AM] I think that the idea is that the construction materials of older homes was less likely to burn as rapidly, but most of the problem these days is the fact of what everybody is putting inside of them, all the plastics and materials and it's the furniture, the draperies. It's toys, it's everything that's petroleum or plastic based. >> Tovo: To the extent that you have information about the construction materials themselves, I would be fascinated by that information. >> We will be happy to provide that. There are some studies and we can provide information for you. >> Tovo: If you've got it at the ready, no need to seek it out. Okay. So I had some questions about the budget detail that you provided. As I understand the format, the categories repeat themselves midway through because some of the divisions I guess were unable to be on the same page. Is that what's going on here with the line item budget detail by activity? >> We're going to call the budget expert up over here. >> Tovo: Great. You probably explained this, but at the moment I didn't need that information so I didn't retain it. But now I need that information so I have to maybe ask you a question you've already described. As I see it, things like education appears on the first page because it's -- it hits the different departments that are noted there and then am I right in thinking that inspection review investigations, other requirements, outreach, transfers, just had to be later and that's why we're seeing those categories repeat themselves. >> That's exactly what's happening. We could only fit so many columns on the legal size sheet so then it repeats itself. But there too is the line item budget summary by line item and on that one all the activities fit, but we role up the expenditures by what we call a category. So all the different salary object account are rolled up to one number, contractual services, all the [11:01:53 AM] different contractual accounts are rolled up to one number. So we're just giving you two levels of detail. >> Tovo: So I had some specific questions about some of these line items, but to understand exactly what the full expediture is on that line item I would need to look both at the first half of that budget detail as well as the second half. So I just wanted to make sure I was correct in that understanding. So let me go ahead and jump into my questions. Bilingual pay, and this is just for some of the divisions, not all. I note that it is 335,835. And we had an audit recently about bilingual pay and how it's assessed and what kind of monitoring our departments are doing. And frankly it pointed to some opportunities to do better monitoring of how individuals who are receiving bilingual pay are actually using it. Are these individuals who are actually using it in their day-to-day job and thus should be incentivized for having that bilingual pay? And I just didn't know if you had had an opportunity to review that audit and reflect on it. I think it may have -- it's been awhile since I looked at it, but I think it may have also suggested kind of a little bit more ongoing training for those individuals receiving bilingual pay or least ongoing monitoring from the city, so I didn't know if you had -- again, if you had had an opportunity to review that audit and implement any of those suggestions. And if you want to get back to me on that, that's fine. I just note that that is a relatively large size expenditure within your budget. Even though I'm only looking at half of it. >> The contract is actually spelled out in the contract who gets bilingual pay and the amounts that they get. So it's controlled by that. >> Tovo: And by the contract you're talking about the contract with the-- >> The collective bargaining agreement. >> Tovo: Thank you. Okay. Can you talk about [11:03:55 AM] educational incentive pay. I couldn't give you an amount for what that -- it's unclear to me what the total amount is, but at least for combat operations it amounts to $850,000 and then there are lots of other line items for that or expenditures in that category across different divisions. Who receives the educational incentive pay and what kind of education are they pursuing to receive that? >> So that again is controlled by the contract. And there are several areas in there. I'm trying to find it here quickly and I can't find it in the contract, but I do know that educational pay is based upon either the degree or by there are other -- there are other Texas fire certification protections that also count and give educational incentive pay. So there's like master firefighter and there's several other areas. >> Tovo: Thank you. It's helpful -- thank you for the information about which of these are within the collective bargaining agreement. I think it's useful for people. I hope as we go into these really deep discussions at the budget level I hope to -- I hope members of the public who are interested, and then we'll kind of pay attention because sometimes we get requests to do this and that and it's helpful for people to better understand what we can influence and what we can't with regard to budget. Okay. Phone allowance. Are those department issued phones and that's what that expenditure is for? Or are those phone allowances that are available to people for their personal phones? Mr. Van eenoo is giving me a very direct look. >> She's got the better information. >> Are Nell palson, assistant director at the fire department. We have a stipend for the department and we have an executive committee that decide which positions require [11:05:55 AM] being called after hours, especially staff type positions would be called after hours or would need the data transfer piece. In addition to the stipend if you're looking at Manns and you need -- maps and you need access to data. There are different lists that get the stipend data. It goes across ranks. >> Tovo: And I know those are at other levels as well, including the mayor, council and staff. Have you done a cost benefit analysis to determine whether it would be cheaper to issue city supplied cell phones for that purpose? >> We do have a handful of issued phones, but when we try to make that more efficient bypassing the phones off from one shift to the next, that's where then we run into problems. Because you have to have a bank of phones that then gets transferred and used. So there is a subset of city issued phones, but for the most parts since cell phones are such an integrated of everybody's lives, looking at their emails and everything else, we're finding that this is a better way to do the stipend. Now, there are some other aspects of cell phone stipends, like a replacement stipend and some other things that we have discontinued doing. People don't get money to buy a new phone every two years like they do in some departments. So we have tried to cut that money back. And we review that the a least once a year with the executive staff who is getting them and who isn't. >> Tovo: So I didn't hear necessarily a response as to whether or not you've done a cost benefit analysis as to whether it's cheaper to issue everybody on that list a city-issued phone. I understand having a bank and passing them off could be inefficient. That wasn't really what I had in mind. >> We have not done a cost efficiency sort of study about that. When we -- it wasn't well tracked about five years ago, so just the process of tracking who was getting it was the initial version of us trying to be more efficient with that. But we could get our research people to go in and try to do a cost benefit analysis if you would like. >> Tovo: I was just curious. [11:07:55 AM] And I don't know to what extent our city has considered that across all the departments that receive cell phone stipends, whether that's something that the city has looked at, if it's cheaper at this point given the technology and the decreasing cost of that technology whether to just issue phones to people who need to be available by phones. Edwards and recognition -- awards and recognition. I assume that's your award ceremony and some of the other events that the department does through the year. >> That would be correct. >> Tovo: Services -- let me hit a couple of the big ones in case I'm losing my colleagues' patience. Non-stock, do not use under commodities. That is on AFD B 5 under commodities other. >> And what was the heading? >> Tovo: Non-stock, do not use. It was a very curious title. >> Well, all of these -- >> Tovo: It's almost a half million dollars so I assume you're using it somehow. >> It's related to cadet uniforms, so it only comes into play when we have a cadet class coming up and it's to track that separate from the rest of the uniform fund that we have. >> Tovo: So cadet uniforms amount to almost a half million dollars. >> When we're running two classes in a year and it's not just their uniforms, it's related equipment for running the cadet class. >> Tovo: So equipment falls into that line as well? >> Yes. And when you think about that personal protective equipment, the turnout gear, they are pretty expensive so that's why it runs up so high. >> Tovo: I saw some equipment line so I wouldn't have expected that to be embedded within that line. Can you help me understand the difference between travel city business and educational travel and also provide some examples of what that looks like in either category? >> Do you want to do [11:09:57 AM] that or do you want me to do that? >> I think you're much more knowledgeable. >> In some ways we combine those. We try to look at that for our training and travel fund. There's the travel piece of it would be especially if the training was outside the state or something, it would hit that line item. But in general the difference between those categories, there's, like, what, three of them, Robert? >> Yes, ma'am. >> Tovo: Three categories? >> That we kind of blend together to take care of that need. >> What's the third one? >> The city -- >> Come up here and talk. >> This is Robert manchaca our financial manager. >> Yes, ma'am. This is Robert manchaca, finance manager. We do, we categorize several of the -- as we talk about our budget, budget is just the plan. We don't know how completely executed, but we think we'll have so much in conferences and seminars, some of it is recruiting. Our recruiting budget is travel so they can go out to various areas, Houston, wherever they might go to travel. Travel for recruiting, so conference seminars, travel for recruiting, and training fees. And then just city -- I believe it's called city -- I forget the exact line item, but it's related to city work we have our air shops -- not our air shops, but our fleet shops goes out and inspects our vehicles before they come online. So they go out to Wisconsin and make sure that they're -- most of our fire apparatus are custom made for our fire department so they look to make sure that they're progressing in the way they're supposed to be. >> And eventually they have to drive them back to Wisconsin. >> Correct. A large part of the training budget is for our spec ops training. They do a lot of swift water, a lot of training at A&M. >> Rescue training. >> Rescue training. >> It goes towards their certifications as specialists in those [11:11:59 AM] areas. >> And so the reference to like the fire apparatus, there are certain points in the contract that the firefighters that are responsible for that area go out and inspect that apparatus to make sure that -- it's kind of like a house, before you put the drywall up, you have to inspect the plumbing and the electric. It's the same thing when you're building an apparatus. >> Tovo: So some of that travel is for training opportunities, some of it is to inspect equipment. >> And some of it is for recruiting. >> Tovo: And some for recruiting, thank you. I didn't see just a line item for recruiting. So that is -- it doesn't mean there isn't one. >> Is it rolled into one of these areas? >> Tovo: I may have missed it. >> It's not really called that really clearly, but it's rolled up under educational services activity. >> Tovo: So recruiting falls within educational services. >> It's like 12,500. I'm not sure what page that number is. >> Tovo: I'll check that one. And then the last specific question I have -- thank you for answering these. I know these are much more specific questions than we sometimes raise in budget assess, but I'm trying to figure out how we use this time. If we're did digging into the detail then I'll dig into the detail, but I understand that you may not have these answers at the ready. Services other, AFD, the page that's noted AFD B 4. And those look like they range across divisions from 40,000 to 620,000 to 240,000. So what gets contained within services other? >> It's a general term, but the big one, the 620,000, that's for our cadet hiring process. So that's going to involve -- >> Hiring a third-party vend Terry comes in and designs the assessments, administers the written test and the standard oral process. And then all the support that goes with that renting facilities, feeding people who are [11:14:00 AM] doing the evaluations of the oral, that sort of thing. >> Tovo: That 620, which was the largest expenditure, there were some other significant expenditures in that line category, but that one is primarily cadet hiring and things associated with that process and those expenses. >> And that pertains to a large contract. Another one I notice is 240,000. That's for our ppe cleaning. >> The personal protective equipment, the turnout gear. >> Tovo: Okay, thanks. >> And we're required by law, it's a mandatory law that we have to clean and inspect ppe annually. >> Thank you. That's really helpful. >> Houston: I have one quick question about overtime. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. >> Houston: Is some of the overtime costs because of special events, and if so, who pays for that? >> I'm going to need a little help with that one. Rob? >> Okay. The fire Marshall can probably -- >> Since special events falls under his division. So if special events such as south by southwest or f1, those organizations will have venues set up above and beyond what you would normally do at a concert hall and we'll have folks that they will pay overtime for on their dime. We have a set rate of $123 an hour that we charge the event programmers to run the event. So if we have a person doing fire watch for four hours, we would bill them four hours times $123 to help offset the cost of the personnel hours used, the materials and other things that might be using the car and supporting their event. >> Houston: So the [11:16:00 AM] overtime we have in our packet does not include those special events? That's just overtime due to vacancies? >> I'm not sure how that -- >> It's a combination, but the vast -- go ahead. >> I would need a little help on the answer, but I believe that it probably does include that, but then there's the reimbursement portion of that too. >> Houston: Explain that a little bit more for me. >> I better have the finance manager describe how we do that. >> Houston: I want to make sure that the special events are paying their fair share of the overtime and that's not put on the taxpayers of Austin to pay that overtime for their events. >> Yes, ma'am, I understand. And the number you do see is being overtime it's the gross amount of overtime that we play. We netted out in the bottom line by cost reimbursement. There's a line item referred to as cost reimbursement. So I think the majority of the special events I believe is repaid to us. >> Houston: So if somebody can tells me what pays the cost reimbursement. I see the cost overtime civilian service and overtime, I guess that's the sworn service, but I can't find the cost reimbursement. >> So councilmember Houston, specifically to your question of the special events, are the cost burden or the overtime for that on the city? The answer is no. The only one that has an altered structure to it is south by southwest and the council came up with an agreement upon dollar amount in 2016 saying we're going to charge you blank to have the south by southwest event in Austin for those nine days. And so it was a flat fee. And within that fee that helped offset the cost of all the support features and overtime done by the firefighters to support the fire department, rather, to support south by [11:18:00 AM] southwest. Every other event, whether it's f1, concerts out at the circuit of America, acl, et cetera, all of that they are billed dollar for dollar -- $123 an hour. It doesn't go specifically to the individual, but you look at the wear and tear on vehicles, apparatus, fuel aid used, all those other things, $123 an hour is helped to offset the cost of all that. So specifically to the question that you asked, for special events the cost burden is not on the city, it's on the event organizer. >> Houston: Thank you. And one last question on the bilingual pay. We had an audit done and there was a recommendation that -- I guess I need one of those books. In the contract -- >> Collective bargaining agreement. >> Houston: In the agreement is there something that the people who receive that stipend are to be -- I think they say have to be reevaluated every so often. So is all of that in there? Because the audit said that they found situations where people weren't using the skill, weren't being tested for it on a periodic basis and weren't being audited. So is that all in the agreement? >> I haven't seen the exact language in the agreement. I think the agreement just proves the benefit and the amount, but the criteria is subject to I believe the corporate standards that we have for all of the departments. And the audit found that that retesting needed to occur across the city. And I believe the human resources department has been working on reevaluating the procedures for bilingual eligibility. So that it's not just unique to the fire department, but it applies to all the other departments. And we can certainly check on the status of [11:20:03 AM] that. >> Houston: I wasn't insinuating that it was only for the fire, but when asked the question if bilingual pay is decided by the agreement so if the requirements for retesting before you get the bilingual stipend, if that's not included can -- is it that still a part of the city's process to make sure that fire and all the others that have collective bargaining agreements policy the same audit standards that they set forth? >> And again, we can verify that there's nothing conflicting in the agreement, but right now the fire department is subject to the same standards for eligibility as all the other city departments. So even the retesting of that is part of the city's procedure for eligible for bilingual pay. >> Mayor Adler: I'll take another turn and then we'll go to Alison. With respect to the vacancy issue, just trying to understand that better. The additional questions that I would have relative to that is the effective cost of the vacancies. And by that we've had conversations that we've talked about. We have a vacancy, but if we didn't have the vacancy we would have another employee, another employee would have benefits and that kind of thing. At the same time it might be a lower rank than the person who is taking the vacancy position because they're on. A real feel for what the actual cost of the vacancies are to us would be a helpful thing to understand as we evaluate that issue. Does that make sense? On the -- what's the difference between a priority 1, 2 and 3 call? I'm sorry. To get that very specific information from E.M.S., [11:22:03 AM] but the priority 1 is the most critical and the one that needs -- it might be like a cpr, heart attack, that type of call. And as the numbers get higher, the acuity or the need for intervention becomes less. >> Go ahead. >> And we can get that information. I know that they're all detailed out in a document, but we could get that information for you. >> Last week when E.M.S. Was here they said priority one was cardiac, breathing obstruction or breathing had stopped or childbirth. Priority 2 was difficulty breathing, not cardiac arrest, but having hypertension and those kinds of things. It's less severe than the priority one and then I don't think they told us what the priority three was. >> Mayor Adler: So does the fire department ever respond to priority 3 calls? >> Yes, we do. We don't respond to priority 4's and 5's, but the priority 3 calls were the ones that if the E.M.S. Is within five minutes then we don't respond, but if they're not, then we do respond. >> >> Mayor Adler: So when we were getting a feel for the fire stations around the city, the geographic and what kind of demand is being put on them, and we were breaking that out by type, the question I would ask is just to get a feel for the calls, so we look at emergency medical calls separately from fire emergencies, from other emergencies, from things that might not be emergencies. And I don't know if that tracks to priority 1, 2 or 3 or not. So I'll let you all figure out the best way to report that in a way that gives us that kind [11:24:05 AM] of understanding. The question with respect to the diversity on the issues we had talked about kind of the objective look that we had talked about in terms of what are the opportunities and what happened in those opportunities over last several years, but also asking for information that relates to the racial, ethic or gender diversity of the last several graduating classes, cadet classes, I think would be helpful information to get as well. The operational question with respect to the trucks and the service, and I'm real cognizant of councilmember Garza's admonishment to be careful about getting into operational areas because I don't know what I'm talking about, which is clearly true, there was -- when we were talking to E.M.S., they had talked about putting people on motorcycles. They were doing that. Councilmember Garza talked about some people have asked about smaller squads, like if you have a smaller car, smaller vehicle you send two people out, but that means the fire station doesn't have the four people that it needs to be able to do that. But depending on the demand if there were that kind of thing, again it's a platooning issue, it wouldn't mean that I have two more people to send out that could take a unit that was on call to the fourth person, so again, I go back to kind of the platoon issue just seems as if there might be something to be done operationally with respect to how many places we have to have four people. And it may go to the question that Jimmy was asking. I've heard that -- again, we're really a safe community and we're safe because we have really good people. Again, what I would like to know, just because people talk about it, just to know what the real data was, on what [11:26:06 AM] our pay scale is relative to other cities. And what our pay scale is nationally. And then separatesly from that, what our benefits are relative to other cities and what our benefits are nationally. And I know that in this session there seems to be some activity on pensions with Houston and Dallas. That seems to be a big issue there. I don't understand that issue. But it would be helpful to better understand what it is that's happening in Houston and Dallas. In part because as I try to engage those cities on some other issues they seem to be really focused on pension work so I'd like to better understand what that is. And then a comparison to where we are relative to whether those issues are. My understanding is on pension that the fire pension among all the pensions that we have in the city may be the strongest and most -- most physically solvent relative to one another. But to not only have something that addresses that question, not only relative to the other pensions we have in the city, but in absolute terms just to take a look at that pension issue. I have a question about the wellness center. And a big proponent of providing that kind of measure and combining with E.M.S. I don't know if we do those things together. E.M.S. And fire. We do? And I don't know whether or not there's -- I don't know how that works in terms of providing that wellness center is something we should be doing ourselves or is that something that we could do in -- there seems to be a lot of wellness centers around the city so I don't know if there's anything that could be done in that respect. [11:28:06 AM] And the last question I think you may have already answered, but just didn't follow. We have the noteworthy council actions where we said as a council or prior council, kind of inspirational goals. This is where we want to be able to get to. If we get somebody that says this is where we are on that continuum, and then what is the plan if we haven't achieved that result to get to that result. Is it a three- year or five-year or 10-year, going back to the question I think Alison asked. Is it a 30-year plan? What is the plan in progress to meet those to the degree that met all those, then we've done that. >> We provided some information on the activity pages with regard to how we felt those activities fit with your goals. And if we didn't neat your -- >> Mayor Adler: Talking about the strategic goals? >> Are you talking about a different set of goals? >> Mayor Adler: I'm talking about on page 11 the council gave -- has given you and the manager aspirational goals for us to meet with respect to four-person staffing, lockeroom, fire stations. I just want to gauge where we are on that and what the plan is, if any, to be able to get there or over what time frame. So again I can put into perspective the competing priorities that we're being asked for? Those are all my questions. Alison? >> Alter: Thank you. I wanted to first ask questions to the special events. I think we clarified that the events are paying for the costs incurred occurring those events, but what I didn't fully understand is what was captured in the data, that overtime that's paid to them is captured under the 14 percent of overtime or if it's in a separate bucket? Because I don't want to [11:30:06 AM] be looking at a measure that says 14% is overtime when it's not really overtime. It's charges from special events. >> Yes, ma'am, Robert manchaca, finance manager. I'm not sure if I understand your question. We represent a budgeted amount in these numbers. They're not actual expenditures. So it's not netted out of that. That's the gross amount that we expect to spend in overtime budget. >> Alter: And I guess it would help for me in understanding what that overtime bucket is because my first glance at it that's a lot in there, that's the canary in the coal mine F it could be spent on special events why it's reimbursed, that would be useful information as I try to think about how I think about that overtime number. >> Okay. So the estimate that appears here in the summary page under expense refunds, there's 163,000- dollar -- >> Alter: What page are you on? >> I'm not sure what page it is. I don't have your packet so I'm not sure what page number it is. >> Tovo: Councilmember alter, I think it is the AFD B 5 under expense refunds. >> The title I have a activity. >> It's in both places, but he's speaking off the summary sheet, which is his -- I'm sorry, it's your first page of all those detail sheets. >> Okay. There's expense category -- excuse me. Inspection, review and support. You go under expense [11:32:07 AM] refunds, it's 163,000-dollar amount listed there. That's the estimated amount that we'll get from different inspections. That's our prevention department. >> Alter: I was asking about for the special events? >> It's included in that amount. >> Alter: Okay. Special events are included within investigation? >> Ma'am? >> Special events falls under inspections? >> Yes, it does. >> In that category, yes, ma'am. >> Actually, special events is under the fire prevention engineering services. >> It's under our fire marshal's office. Ites not called out here by expense category. It's under the activity roll-up, so it's rolled up in there. >> Mayor Adler: So to that end when you're giving us information about the cost of vacancies and the cost of overtime, make sure that you don't include overtime that is otherwise being reimbursed that is under real expense. >> We will. >> And then another question that I wanted to get clarification on, I understand that's important to do the regional coordination so that we're providing adequate fire service the whole area. I'm wondering how that works in terms of the participating agencies contributing to the services that are being provided by the Austin fire department, particularly interested in terms of the esd's and their support, but I think that that cooperation is probably broader than not and I'm curious to understand if we're subsidizing fire services to other governmental entities or units. Or not. >> And we'll be able to provide that information for you. >> Mayor Adler: Yes, mayor pro tem? Oh, go ahead. >> Tovo: I just have a follow-up. It's not clear to me how -- to get back to that original question, if overtime is incurred for a special event does it appear right now in [11:34:08 AM] the overtime category as well as in the expense refund category. >> Yes, ma'am. We record the expenditure where it actually occurs, so it's -- we'll get into kind of the accounting part of it, but as expenditures incur we book it into an overtime call so we see the actual cost and we reimburse it to a separate line item to net it against. >> Tovo: Got it. So a couple of years ago there was -- -- there was a lot of interest on the prior council, but it has continued and maybe strengthened on this council to really get a sense of what we're spending on special events and how much of those are reimbursed. And it's been really challenging. We've gotten a lot of data from staff, but I can see -- I'm starting to understand why that is such a challenging question because in part just the conversation we're having here today because it's accounted for in different places and at least, I guess, some of the special events, maybe not those you are directly involved in, but the first amendment also draw on our public safety and those are not reimbursable activities for the most part. But thank you for the questions. That's helpful to know as we look at the data that those are recorded in both places, but it's not necessarily going to be easy for one of us to match them up. >> Mayor Adler: Manager? >> I just wanted to mention it's a best practice from an accounting standpoint and a transparency standpoint to gross up both the expense and the revenue sources. The revenue source may be the expense refund. So in our accounting system when we run payroll, it's going to distribute the regular pay to payroll, it's going to take the overtime and put it in that overtime bucket. So typically our instructions are to departments. If they get reimbursed for services from an outside agency like south-by or acl, that money that they get back will be recorded as an expense reimbursement. [11:36:08 AM] So we have to kind of hand max the reimbursement with what our estimate of the costs are. So if that helps in the explanation, it's really not appropriate to reduce the overtime by the expense reimbursement because then if you ask me, well, how much did we spend in overtime for the year, I can't tell you the real number. >> Tovo: Sure. I want to be clear I'm not casting any judgment on your accounting methods. It would be inappropriate for me to do so for all kinds of reasons, including that I don't have near the skills I would need to to render a judgment on that. But I'm just trying to understand how it was done and also just to reflect on, you know, it's -- understanding now how it's done I understand better how challenging it is to match up those costs and expenses. So thanks for the conversation. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. >> Garza: I had a question about -- there's often questions from council about overtime and special events and does the fire department -- like where would overtime come from that wouldn't normally be there in there wasn't a special event? So for example, we have to staff our fire engines and trucks with a certain number of staffing, but do we staff additional fire trucks when like south by southwest is here or do we set up a -- I've been downtown during those events and there's like central has like that four wheeler. Is that an additional staffed four wheeler? >> I don't know if I can say yes or no to that specific question, but generally speaking we'll staff up additional units like the brush trucks during weather events. And so most of the time for special events we don't staff up additional units like E.M.S. Does. We use onseen units. And a good example is [11:38:09 AM] that most recently during the women's March we moved units in to help with that event. What we do is move our units that are a little further out and reposition them so that they in turn can cover some of the other calls. So it's not an overtime expenditure then. >> Garza: So -- go ahead. >> I apologize. Didn't mean to interrupt. So to expound a little bit more on what chief Kerr just said, for acl there was an apparatus, reserve one, pulled into play. They're charged. The event is charged for the apparatus and the staffing thereof. F1 the same deal. They had a regular reserve apparatus used there in addition to some brush trucks as well. And for each of those there's a free associated with that to cover the fee itself as well as staffing for that. Not all special events require those additional resources, but if the event itself does require those resources, that's all mapped out by our special events group to say this is what you need for this event based on the scope and size and hazards that are involved to do it in a safe fashion. That is separate from an operations deal where because of the larger volume of people downtown, like chief Kerr alluded to, they might reorganize some units in the downtown area to help with response areas because of a larger crowd in that area. The crowd itself isn't so much related to the event, like south by southwest, about everything downtown on sixth street is south by southwest sanctioned or related, but you've still got that large mass of people down there that we still have to navigate through. So we might have to make some operational adjustments there. That would be separate from the special events portion where they are paying for the apparatus and equipment used. >> Garza: There seems to be a misconception that we are paying overtime to firefighters because there's a special event. And it sounds like that doesn't happen. [11:40:12 AM] We move fire trucks, but those fire trucks would have been staffed with the same trucks at the fire station had that event not happened. So it doesn't sound like there's overtime expenses in addition to what's being reimbursed by a special event. Is that right? >> That is correct. The special event -- all things associated to it and the equipment and apparatus and people used are charged to that organization. >> And let me just note too that on those activity sheets under the break down of the budget, it shows what the personnel salaries benefits, et cetera, would cost? And it shows the overtime amount for that particular activity? So that might help too. So if you looked up the communications budget it shows that $340,000 of that was overtime. And you look at the operations budget and 14 million of that was overtime. >> Mayor Adler: So the 14 million in operation, would that be having the four-member-- would most of the overtime be associated with making sure that we had the four-person squads? >> That would be correct. >> And the vacancies. >> Mayor Adler: So what was the overtime cost attributable to the vacancies and then the four-person squads? Would be helpful. Anything else on this, Ms. Houston? >> Just one question on 8-1, cadet hiring and educational services. >> Yes. >> Houston: If instead of the percentage if we can have the actual members because we start with numbers and then we go to percentages. And then we go back to numbers and then percentages. If we could just be consistent. There you go. If we could just have a number so that we know how many people entering the academy graduated and how many of the people who required [11:42:15 AM] certification, what is the finite number of those rather than the percentages of those? >> Okay. >> Mayor Adler: Any other questions, council? This has been really helpful for me. Again, manager and Ed and chief. Really helpful because I'm learning a lot and it will help me be constructive and when we talk in April and we talk in August. Sorry to have so many additional questions. >> Houston: And I really love the videos, both that E.M.S. And fire have given us, because it gives a real sense of if you've never been to one where you all are all out and capital metro participates in those where they're multi-families and with the single residences, so I think there's a lot of partnerships and I think that helps people visualize what it is that the fire service deals with on a daily basis. Thank you. >> Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you very much. >> Thank you.- we appreciate your time and your interest. So thank you very much. >> Mayor Adler: Thanks a lot. We are adjourned.