Dale Coulam shared a summary of the three agreements for combined services for Santa Clara and Ivins, specifically regarding the sharing of revenues and costs. Law enforcement states that each city shall pay its share of the cost as defined in Section 19 below, which set forth the formula of 54% for Ivins and 46% for Santa Clara. That is from 2012. That formula is reviewed and adjusted annually and currently is 56% for Ivins and 44% Santa Clara. There is no reference to sharing revenue since the source of revenue is small. We get grants and reimbursement for such things as school resource officers and some special events. For the true-up, it is a net, we apply the revenue we receive against the costs. The next agreement we entered into was for Justice Court and it states that all fines and forfeitures collected shall be remitted 50% to Ivins and 50% to Santa Clara, this is to account for the contribution of the value of court facilities and offices provided by Santa Clara and is written right into the agreement. The Fire and EMS agreement states that each city shall pay their share of revenue and costs as set forth in section 18 below, which set forth the formula in 2017 as 55% for Ivins and 45% for Santa Clara. That is currently 56% for Ivins and 44% for Santa Clara. It specifically states that that formula is not only for sharing costs, but also revenues. To date, there have been no amendments to that agreement. It states that this agreement may not be amended or modified without written consent of both cities. Both cities shall mutually execute and deliver an amendment to this agreement. There has been no amendment to date and remain as written. Matt Ence agreed that was an accurate summary of the written agreements. Fire Chief Andy Parker stated he arrived in February 2022 and his background is in ambulance service and he worked for two separate ambulance companies. Private aid and also the Los Angeles City Fire Department. He then served in Rancho Cucamonga for about 18 years, and has been here in Ivins for about two years. This budget true-up is FY2022 and FY2023 budget year. His employment was from March to June to prep and it was a monumental task to provide for a Fire and EMS that was severely neglected. When he arrived he positioned himself in the Ivins Station. There was a structure fire south of Center Street. He was the first to arrive to a house fire and with the assistance of residents, we proceeded to put that fire out with a garden hose. The ambulance crew was the first to arrive, and the engine arrived several minutes later. Through process, experience and discovery, he began to see quite a few things that needed to be fixed. Working with Con Fulde and issues with staffing contributed to unforeseen costs. The Center Street station in August was absolutely the right decision to make, which we will prove through data. There were processes and laws that were not being followed. For the true-up, you all have a hard copy of this information. The Center Street revenue shows the costs and revenue breakdown he and Brock Jacobsen did to provide a revenue source to open the Center Street Station. That was done in good faith, and the calculations are there and the extenuating circumstances that show why there is a budget amendment. It was a monumental task to go from where we were to where we are. For the true-up, originally on staffing we had planned 12-hour schedules, like an ambulance service delivery running and a pick-up truck, usually like a Gold Cross supervisor. Those ran at the Rachel station. We had calls dispatched to the Center Street Station for the Medic 32 which is the white ambulance at Center Street. That was dispatched to 102 calls with nobody there. It was a 14-minute response. There are 102 of those calls. We are down to 5 minutes and we'd like to get down to 4 minutes for our house fire response, and 8 minutes for EMS. We did all that in 2 years, and it takes money. It is considerable cost to get to the long-term. We converted our two-person ambulance crew and one person rescue into a 3/2 model for fire response. Before, the fire engine wasn't going anywhere except with volunteers. We had a 2017 extrication and fatality with a 27-minute response time. That was occurring because that engine wasn't running. We put that in service, and a change in our scheduling from 12-hour shifts to 48/96, so when they come on shift, they are on for 48 hours and off for 96 hours. That is a 56 hour work week. With that comes FLSA. Any time those members on 48/96 work an extra shift, it's overtime. Before, we filled it with volunteers and reserves. When we had two on ambulance and one on rescue if the Captain on rescue was sick, we couldn't staff it. They also had to go home if they were over their hours. Those are all pre-cursors that are unacceptable risks to the public to provide a service like that. He felt it was emergent to go to the 3/2 staff, and we can go back through minutes to see this data. We had three full-time members and twelve part-time members that worked one shift on and five off. They staff the ambulance and if anyone gets sick, we don't have to backfill, there is no overtime costs that way. That is what neighboring fire agencies have been doing for years. Those are some of the pre-cursors to the overages is overtime costs. In June we presented options and great discussion through public meetings. 620K was our Solution 3 costs, and Solution 2 was to just staff our crew with twelve part-time members, so we did an analysis between the two options. We hired three crew members and moved them up to Ivins, and three full-time Captains, which was 330K. Dale Coulam had previously inquired how we went from 600K down to 80K, that is how. He and Brock Jacobsen knew staffing needed to happen for the Center Street Station and needed a revenue source, so on Solution 4, we had a 9-year plan to get three members on the fire engine and two on an ambulance. Going down to two is only in very rural areas, not where you are running 15-1600 calls. When he arrived, there were only about 150 less calls than they have now, so the demand was there. There just wasn't a system in place. It was not a personnel or training issue, just a systems problem that wasn't being addressed. The 400K overage is a huge deal, and taxpayer money, but it is well-spent money. He is happy with where they are at and the staff is phenomenal. The benchmark is 330K for personnel. Debbie Bannon, our Finance Director is online, and this is her calculation table. We knew that the basic template was going to be about 1.86 million dollars and that is what our approved budget was. That doesn't include overtime or FLSA because we weren't planning on that. We have had a good impact on the County, and services have definitely improved. In August 2022, he explained that we were using three full-time members at the Center Street Station and draft them from the Rachel Station and move them here and down twelve part-time members to six. Today we have two members on every piece of equipment. One ambulance that jumps back and forth. Engine 31 if they are available can get dispatched, but there are still some problems, so we don't violate labor laws. We have six people on every day. The feedback from Ivins was a robust volunteer response. He has not seen that take place at all, but he outfitted them for 33k and had people showing up to the firehouse in tennis shoes. They did not get the robust response that we wanted. We downed our twelve part-time to six part-time and included three full-time. That gave an overage of about $5,500. Response time when the rig went in service was cut in half from 14 minutes to 8.42 minutes. If we get three calls all coming in, we can handle that. We don't really take aid from Gold Cross anymore. 330k was planned, and there are obvious operational costs. We went with the hybrid option and saved 130k by going down to six part-timers. We had 165k in wildland revenues. We did not do any wildland response. We did zero that year and down to 20K. He and Brock Jacobsen knew that personnel costs were on the cusp and with egregious response times and previous heinous call outcomes, it was the right choice. No-brainer. We had expenses for personnel. We took a part-time member and moved them into a full-time capacity at about 50K. Our Santa Clara policy manual increased in that we offer one more day for holiday to an employee. They are on 24 hours now, not 12. 14 holidays a year is about 90K that we didn't account for. We weren't on the 48/96 and that budget year had already started. We had FLSA implications and overtime costs, so we have two members on every piece of equipment. He found through discovery what resources we had and what we were up against and found we are in violation on several OSHA items. He had no idea those items were not being done. SCBA respirator needs to fit. We outfitted every member and tested to fit properly. We had to implement that as well. Compensation costs were a 354K overage. That is about 50k to make our part-timer full-time, about 90K in increased holiday pay, 116 hours of overtime at 256K. As soon as we opened Center Street, we had two people per rig. We could have shut the station down, which is still an option today. We started filling up overtime which is time and a half for members. Reserves we now have three because most left for full-time employment. We are down to three part-time members, which is a serious problem. They fill shifts, which is 96K. That equals 352K in overage. We had a member get injured and one unfortunately terminated so there were 9 months of overtime. Wages worked against extra shifts regardless of part-time or full-time and racked up overages. FLSA moved to 48/96 and the implication with that was about 30K that we didn't plan for. FICA and retirement is on here. Uniforms are 30K for volunteers and we speculated 80K for increased costs. We had about 653 calls last year and that is a lot of fuel. You can see every line item that we are over, all the fuel costs and uniform costs and fire training. We are not meeting regulation requirements for paramedic licensure. We are now in compliance, but it was 10k for that. Mayor Hart stated there is a difference in understanding on how revenues were to be shared and when the number was big enough on the true-up, it got checked out on our end and we realized the terms of our contract is not how it was being distributed. We need to come to an understanding on that. We presented the terms of our agreement. Since merging fire, the revenue has been based on a 50/50 formula. Brock Jacobsen stated that is correct. That is how it was presented to the City Council by the City Manager at that time. Mayor Hart inquired why is the signed agreement different? Brock Jacobsen stated he wasn't party to that agreement. He was told the revenue was split 50/50. Mayor Hart stated that it is Ivins' position that we should have been following the written agreement and we are not responsible for that misunderstanding and do not know how it happened, but we need to come to a resolution on what should happen now. It is a sizable amount, and we need more frequent communication to anticipate things like this. In looking at how the distribution has been taking place, we need Santa Clara's response and what you believe is the right and fair thing to do in these circumstances. Mayor Rick Rosenberg stated that at the time of the Fire and EMS merger, Santa Clara did not provide EMS at all. There was no EMS service it was all done privately with the carrier prior to Gold Cross. They had a wild land program that brought Santa Clara a decent amount of revenue. Part of the merger was that Ivins was set on keeping EMS and had a significant investment there, and a number of staff and highly-trained people. The concept of doing rescue for EMS and Fire came to be. At that time Santa Clara was strictly fire and had a robust wild land department that brought in revenue. We were taking on additional expense with EMS that we had never had to budget for before to provide that service as well as share the wild land revenue that we enjoyed. He doesn't know why it is not in the agreement. His recollection was that it was sold to Santa Clara as a 50/50 concession. It was presented to Council as such to buy into the merger. He doesn't think Council would have gone along with the agreement otherwise. That was the carrot to go along with the merger. We had enjoyed a lot of success with the police merger and if we did this we can double our service to residents for not a lot more cost. He appreciates having the department we have today and having the EMS and rescue department that we have. He values that service. If we want to look at that agreement and change how those costs and revenues are pro-rated, we should by amendment from both Councils. It has been done that way since it started. We are seven years in, and we haven't changed anything on our side since. It was done that way for a reason and presented to Santa Clara City Council that way to get them to jump into the EMS arena. Councilmember Ben Shakespeare stated that he spoke to Wally Ritchie at the time about EMS and it was a loss of about 350k a year. Wild land was a gain of about 150k. EMS loses money mainly because of billing and the way it is collected. This was before his time and the agreement is very clear the way it is written but that is how it was explained to him verbally. There are cost and revenue shares. It was going to be a flip of about 500k that was going to be revenue share or loss share. The agreement is there, and warrants understanding. That is the way it was explained and understood. Councilmember Lance Anderson stated we paid more cost and we got more revenue. Why would we as a city say we want this, and we will pay more money? He is trying to understand a loss on EMS. What was our loss last year on EMS? Chief Andy Parker stated that 330K was what our revenues were estimated to be. We billed out 1.2 million dollars last fiscal year and collected about 300K. That was why we elected to go to another billing entity. They projected with our existing ambulance transport numbers to go from 300K to 800K. We are trying to increase that and use a Fire/EMS billing entity. Councilmember Lance Anderson inquired we took the ambulance away from Gold Cross and today we spend 300K? Chief Andy Parker stated that is the revenue. We combined our resources and budget with EMS. He can look at that expense number. Councilmember Lance Anderson inquired what is the net difference? What does it cost to have the ambulance? Separately what was Wild Land? Revenue versus cost. Then we know if it is even worth it. Chief Andy Parker stated the new model is about 120% of what we get back, for whatever we put out. People, fuel, rigs. The State has it set up that way as an incentive for us to do it because they need our help. We know that moving forward. Brock Jacobsen stated that going back to when the merger happened, he sat with Wally Ritchie, Chief Bob Flowers, Chief Bradley Hannig. There was a lot of debate about EMS, and Santa Clara taking on EMS. When we combined Police we talked about doing Fire. We were told then we don't want EMS, it is a black hole. That came from Ivins' employees. Then in 2018 we went the rounds, and he asked what has changed to take it? It still doesn't cover its costs. We bring in 330K and the cost to run the department is 2.6 million and everyone that works in Fire and EMS can run both sides. They run more EMS calls than fire calls. If it was 50% of 2.6 million is 1.3 million and deduct 330K, that is a 970K loss. 70% more calls for EMS than Fire. We had two full-time employees, and the Wild Land crew were seasonal, six months. We didn't lose money. We made money. We paid. The State paid. We didn't have to backfill because we didn't send out full-time staff. They ran for $15-$20 an hour and the State reimbursed them. We made money then. Now we send full-time staff to be Wild Land trained. Still today it generates revenue. EMS is still not positive. Councilmember Lance Anderson inquired what is the net difference for Wild Land? What did we put in our pockets after covering all expenses? Councilmember Kevin Smith stated that needs to include overtime. We didn't make as much on Wild Land because they were short and had to pay overtime. Factor that in as well. Chief Andy Parker stated Wild Land was only this year so last year they had no deployment. For this current fiscal year there is revenue. He believes it is 18K positive back to Ivins. Mayor Hart stated he would like to go back to the difference in perception on this. When we say EMS loses money, basically it requires tax revenue. So does Fire, so does law enforcement. They all drain on taxpayers. Mayor Rick Rosenberg stated going back to when we merged, we had no cost in EMS. Zero, because it was all privatized. If you are only collecting 30% that shows your loss. When we merged Santa Clara residents stepped up and took part of the loss of Ivins EMS caused. Wild Land is always a net gain. We are guaranteed payment from the State. There is no collection loss on Wild Land like there is with EMS. Mayor Hart stated that he is not disagreeing with that, but what is your position both retroactively and currently? Is it still the opinion of your Council that this distribution split should remain 50/50 or should that have switched over at some point? He thinks that we can agree if we handed this off to a judge what would happen, but we don't want to do that. We want to come to a meeting of the minds if we can. Whatever revenue came was an offset against the cost. Expenses and revenue were shared differently. Expenses were 56/44 and revenues coming in at 50/50. We may have to create an amendment. If it goes the way Ivins thinks it should have been, there would be no amendment. It is already in the agreement. Do you think that 50/50 split should continue on into the future? Mayor Rick Rosenberg stated the Council decides, but the department has advanced to one department that provides a service that is valued by residents and raised the bar with professionalism and the ability to respond quickly and save lives. He is fine with going with the language in the agreement but ratify it so there is no ambiguity. There was a reason why the split has been done the way it has. It is his opinion that we have reached the point of one department. Councilmember Lance Anderson stated in the accounting there was a loss, but was there value? Ivins has seen the value of having an ambulance. It used to take Gold Cross a long time to get out here, and Dixie. Mayor Hart stated there was an understanding on Santa Clara's side that allowed them to agree to this merger and our understanding was that we share those costs. Matt Ence stated he may not agree on the outcome if this was put before a judge, but the summary of the contract was correct. The course of action and dealings between the two cities and nothing was concealed from Ivins or the public. This issue was not raised for six plus years. Any implication in an intent to conceal or deceive and that a judge would find a certain way, is not that clear. He is one hundred percent supportive of the discussion and it needs to happen. Mayor Hart stated that Mayor Rick Rosenberg has said that Santa Clara is content with the way it is now with the department. The agreement would simply be the way it was written going into the future. Councilmember Mike Scott stated the true-up information came to him a week or two ago and it was pointed out that we were only getting 50% revenue and what the shortfall would be on Wild Land, about 19K. He did an analysis back to 2018 and calculated if we had been receiving what the agreement said it would be in total about 128K over that period of time that we should have received but didn't. From Ivins perspective, we should have received that money and didn't. He understands that there were lots of conversations and that Santa Clara's thinking was different. Still, that is what the agreement says and what your City Council agreed on. He believes it was done in good faith and an expectation was there, but that was not the deal. Councilmember Sharon Barton stated she also believes it was done in good faith. As City Council our responsibility is checks and balances and when this information came forward, and the figure was about 120K, we need a resolution on that. Councilmember Sharon Gillespie agrees and thinks going forward if we want to amend the agreement, we are all open to that discussion but honoring what is in writing is what we hope to achieve, retroactively to when the agreement was signed. She is relying on the document. Mayor Hart stated they are saying the merger with EMS services with Santa Clara likely would not have happened and it was apparently misread, and the agreement was passed onto their Council who assumed the verbal information was correct. He is guessing that is what happened. Santa Clara came away with an understanding of how those revenues and expenses were going to be distributed. The point is correct that we didn't discover this had taken place for years. We would have protested whenever that discovery had been made. The follow-up question is for the sake of going forward, can we reach middle ground? Discovering this is a significant amount of money. The agreement says one thing and the understanding in Santa Clara was another. The true-up should be distributed correctly this year. Dale Coulam stated we did bring this up in the fall of this year with Mayor Rick Rosenberg and Brock Jacobsen and the Fire/EMS agreement was patterned the same as the law enforcement agreement. Therefore, he assumed it was also being handled by a net expenditure. He is not sure what the discussion was with Wally Ritchie but it started in January 2018 and Wally Ritchie left shortly thereafter. By the time we got our first reporting, our new finance director took it at face value what he received as far as reports. It was not questioned until the true-up amount was so large and we had a more detail-oriented finance director who questioned it. We met then, and it seems that Santa Clara's former City Manager had represented it to Santa Clara's Council to be 50/50. That is not binding upon Ivins City. He believes it is normally good business to find a compromise instead of pushing legally. The true-up should be done correctly this year and it is out in the open and fix it this year. Our Council wants to go to the beginning of the term of the contract. That is for the two Councils to decide. Mayor Hart stated this is just a work meeting, but we can talk about what we think is fair or go to our own Councils and discuss it there formally. Councilmember Lance Anderson stated that amending it so that it's the net in the future so total revenues and total expenses and the net, so we can split it that way to make it easy. If we did it this year as it is written what would that difference be? 224K is the true-up number. Following the agreement what would that number be? Brock Jacobsen stated that there was no Wild Land revenue because it didn't function, so just off of EMS revenue is 330K. Cade Visser stated that the difference for FY2023 is $11,546. Wild Land is for FY 2024 and does not relate to the true-up. Councilmember Lance Anderson inquired if we have calculated back to the beginning? Cade Visser stated he started in 2021 and he has 80K. Councilmember Ben Shakespeare inquired who wrote the agreement? Brock Jacobsen stated he believes Dale Coulam and Russ Gallian. Dale Coulam stated that his understanding was that Fire and EMS would closely follow the law enforcement agreement, so he assumed it was being handled as a net true-up. That had been going on for six years prior to this agreement. This year we clearly saw that was not how it was being handled when Cade Visser discovered that. Then we met in the fall to discuss it. He believes it should be handled per the contract. If the Councils want to amend the agreement, that is fine. That is up to you. Councilmember Ben Shakespeare inquired if anyone has gone back through minutes and those discussions? If the request goes retroactive it is important to go back to all parties and minutes and get those brought in, and involve all those that were in the discussions. Moving forward, following the agreement, he is fine with that. He was told the day he was elected to get rid of EMS. Where we are at, we just can't collect for it. If we do retroactive, let's pull those minutes and involve all those that were in those discussions. We thought it was split per capita and revenues were split 50/50. True-up and move forward under this agreement he would not disagree with. If we go back to the beginning we need to review those minutes and review what was intended and discussed. Councilmember Lance Anderson stated it matters what was written down. He would like to know the real number to see what the compromise would be. Santa Clara has had a real benefit from EMS that is not revenue-producing. How many calls to Santa Clara? How many to Ivins? Do we go back the five years? He doesn't think so, because there has been a misunderstanding, but he'd like to see those numbers. It could be more than 128K. Councilmember Mike Scott stated we all have a duty to our citizens and based on the agreement it is 100K or more. We have a duty to our citizens to honor that agreement. There may have been discussions and misunderstandings. It is a 16-page document and a five-minute read and Santa Clara City Council approved it. That's the way it works. He may be told something at Council, but if what he signs is different than what he is told, that is on him. He understands the idea of compromise, but it is not right to just take this year's true-up. That is not right for our citizens. Brock Jacobsen stated before the merger, Ivins was covering Santa Clara for EMS and no cost to us. Councilmember Lance Anderson stated shame on us. Brock Jacobsen stated it was at Ivins residents' cost. We may not have taken it on because we had the benefit at zero cost. Councilmember Lance Anderson stated and after so many years Ivins maybe would have not continued to want to do that. Who knows? It was indeed a benefit. And no cost. We as a Council are stating that we need to do something about that. Brock Jacobsen stated he agrees the contract needs to be looked at and fixed. Part of a clarification would be why do we have Ivins City employee Chief Bob Flowers overseeing Santa Clara's Fire Chief? It makes no sense. Mayor Hart stated it made sense then, because we were operating under a Public Safety model which was adopted into Santa Clara for a period of time, but he doesn't want to go down that road. We don't need to. If we are going to look at accurate numbers, it would be laborious to Debbie Bannon and Cade Visser and to our recorders to look at the minutes to do that. He doesn't see us coming to a center point. If that is the course of action that both Councils think we should do, we can do that. This was a format to try to reach a resolution and see if we can work something out. Right now, Ivins City owes Santa Clara a substantial amount of money and this Council says don't pay it all because we are also owed. Santa Clara's terms they understood and applied these first few years were appropriate given the change of circumstance for your City and residents with that merger. You have managed the department and developed it as Mayor Rick Rosenberg stated it is a unified service and has value to default back to the original agreement. Councilmember Lance Anderson stated he hopes we can figure it out. It is working and helpful to have that resource to both cities. Mayor Hart stated if we take ourselves back seven years and both Councils are considering this merger and Santa Clara says we are not willing to take on EMS services. It isn't going to work because we have it good with services at no cost to our residents. Would we have then looked at the value of the merger where this 50/50 model sharing revenue on Wild Land and absorbing the cost on EMS? He doesn't know but it would be a more difficult decision knowing all this and so retroactively is sensing that Santa Clara looks at these first few years and made it work and that we want to stay together. Ivins is standing on the legality of the agreement itself. Regardless of the circumstances, we are owed this revenue. He would suggest if it is in both cities' interests to maintain this merger, do what we need to do to make sure that service continues. It was a shock when that true-up came to us because we had no previous knowledge. That can't happen again. Councilmember Lance Anderson inquired if Santa Clara amended their budget in June of last year to deal with this issue? Brock Jacobsen stated we did, but the true-up hits this current fiscal year. Cade Visser and Debbie Bannon agreed to do that true-up in the next fiscal year. Councilmember Lance Anderson inquired did Santa Clara have knowledge in June that they were going to be over budget? Brock Jacobsen stated we did do a budget amendment. He would have to ask Debbie Bannon that. Councilmember Lance Anderson stated that usually a compromise is half. That is his proposal. Councilmember Jarett Waite stated we have had discussions about doing away with EMS at some point. We have moved to this model where they are trained both ways, so it works. That may be something we want to do in the future, where we hope a private company comes in and covers the area. We don't really want to look at that. He was on Council when the agreement was signed, and he remembers distinctly that the carrot was at 50/50 that got them over the line to approve it. We were hesitant to take on EMS. We should find a compromise. Go to our Council and look at the minutes and research. Nothing super exhaustive. We can't agree here without the full amount. Mayor Hart stated find the real rough number and do as Councilmember Lance Anderson suggested and go half. We can talk those through and go to our individual Councils. Way back when we brought on EMS services, we had Dixie ambulance, and the response times were terrible. Our residents took it on the chin, and it was always expensive to have that in-house. Ivins residents supported it because the service was so much better. As Fire Chief Andy Parker pointed out, services are better than ever. If you took a poll in our senior population, residents most likely want that service, expensive as it is. We will go to our own Council meetings and thank you all for the reports to help us understand. Councilmember Sharon Barton stated that the residents appreciate EMS and have peace of mind in having that service there. Both cities have that type of feedback and going forward we need to compromise, and both appreciate this service that makes both of our communities a better place to live. Mayor Hart stated that the agreement may be modified or left as-is. Councilmember Kevin Smith stated that if we are looking at a 50/50 split, we would need to then research 6-7 years or maybe just go back a few years. We have been keeping track since 2021 to that year. That is his proposal. Move forward from there as a point of reference, which is 65-80K rather than 130K. Cade Visser stated that he has GL codes for 2018 and 2019 and 2020 and the rough number without confirmation is 97K. Mayor Hart stated that 48K would be the compromise. Councilmember Christa Hinton stated we may be looking at that 97K but also it may not be 50/50 going forward. Mayor Hart stated we can move off this point and go to our individual Councils.
Chief Bob Flowers stated that his opinion is that we are so much better together than apart. Working with both Councils, he admires them all so much and how much they care for their cities. He thinks we are in the right direction and Fire Department is marvelous and there is a marked improvement on our services. He appreciates what they do. He was not part of the contract but he remembers the EMS portion of it, and it is just not profitable. We approached Santa Clara for volume and it wouldn't be at a cost to Santa Clara. Things change and this was a long time ago and he appreciates where we are today. This is the right place to be for our citizens. He doesn't have a budget adjustment. He met with both Councils about a month ago, and he has done quite a bit of research on our numbers and justify our budget request in the next three years. Crime has been down, but there is an increase in calls for service, like traffic. Crime is flat and going back and looking at demographic and our community, in high-density housing we have not seen an increase other than calls for service. Nothing that would indicate extra challenges for us. The drop-off on his graph shows a decrease in rates and crimes against property is down. Burglaries went up during our construction phase. That is generally people that come into our community, hit us and then leave. Our population is growing but our crime has not. That is wonderful. We show a big increase to calls and get lots of speeders. The Black Hills and Fire Lake Park we get asked how much time we spend there and that is what we measure by now. Measurable strategies include time management and how we spend it and how we can spend it more effectively. We are working on our database and appreciate Lance Haney helping us out with that. There is a discussion about adding an officer this year. He still has that request. The court has opened back up, so we have a demand there and our investigations are so complex. Our detective carries about 35 cases, and it should be no more than 15. That is something favorable we can do sometime after the budget true-up. Next is our drug strategy. They are not going away. It is in our community. Fentanyl is a problem, and we want to come to Council to talk about that and involving another K-9, not this year but probably the following year. We are a member of the Washington County Drug Task Force, which is huge for us. We added an officer in there and there are costs to that. We are requesting a vehicle, with our usage, we generally try to get two a year. He doesn't know about dispatch fees, but he would request traffic control devices for both cities and that is a cost. The last is infrastructure cost for both cities and Santa Clara needs to take a look at their animal shelter, probably 40-50K and evaluate what you want to do there. He has come to you for a couple years now about that and the condition of our animal shelters. We feel good and we have been treated really well. When we merged the Police Departments, we were in good shape. That was not necessarily true for the Fire Department. In combining resources, our costs are stagnant because we started in a good place. Councilmember Sharon Gillespie stated thank you for helping her understand and learn and answering her millions of questions. Her concern is regarding the upcoming PGA tournament for Black Desert Resort regarding budget and staffing. They are responsible for their own security, but everything surrounding that event, they may not have a responsibility for and that we may need to plan for in terms of operations and parking. Black Desert Resort doesn't have a director of security at this point. How do we prepare for 225K people to visit Ivins in October? Chief Bob Flowers stated this is much like Iron Man. This is a huge event that affects both cities and traffic. It is a five-day or longer event. He has been talking with Chuck Gillette and the public works director from Santa Clara and requested numbers so he can start reporting on that. TRC will go through all that. He has every confidence between Police and Fire, that we will meet those needs. The road is designed for it. They are a little concerned about the Santa Clara piece of that road. As soon as he knows more, he will get that information out. Black Desert Resort will be good partners. Councilmember Sharon Gillespie stated she believes the PGA will be good partners as well, but we need to be transparent for our residents about any limitations and the safety concerns about traffic. Chief Bob Flowers stated we will get that information out to our residents. It will be big and fun. Chief Andy Parker stated that his goal is to use data to make decisions and it should drive everything we do. We want to be able to anticipate call volumes, and the PGA will be overtime. By State law, they will be required to staff up ambulances and they outsource in other areas of the County. We can utilize other agencies to supplement that level of medical or EMS provision and the event pays for that. We know those things are coming. Lexipol shows that firefighters have a stress level above surgeons. There are demands on Wild Land deployment and our families. He works 2080 hours a year, 40 hours a week. They work 2912 hours a year. It can be 3-4K hours a year during deployment which is pretty standard because of our wildfire threat. Some of these guys work three jobs. Brock Jacobsen has been great with his management and leadership to try to increase wages to retain personnel. Entry level is around $14 an hour. It requires a year's worth of education and if they go to paramedic school that is another year, so entry level is around 48K a year. Retirement benefits and lack of support from elected leaders are concerns. We have great support from all of you here and he appreciates the help with getting the other station open. It was a great opportunity. UFRA is developing how to teach suppressing a fire using limited resources. It is challenging because growth is happening, we are trying to catch up with that. We have three part-time firefighters left on shift. That is all. The regulations are that they legally cannot work more than 760 hours in six months and if they exceed that, the Affordable Care Act comes in and then we have to pay them benefits. Backfilling positions comes at a cost of 18-25K because we have to buy them equipment, train them and get them licensed. Part-timers come and go but the cost to residents is extreme. He would like to convert these three positions who are mostly at the Rachel station on the ambulance, to full-time positions. They are already doing the job and are great people. We would provide them benefits. He would like to have someone in the office part-time doing 30 hours a week to assist with documents. It would be valuable and is standard in Santa Clara. Battalion Chief is a duty shift officer and responds to calls, about 160 calls this year. He is proposing in 2024-2025 to have all full-time staffing the same as public safety and it is easier for overtime, FLSA implications and the Affordable Care Act. We are looking right now at about 4-5 minute response times. The senior center generates calls, and Black Desert Resort will fluctuate based on events, but it will also generate calls. We previously had about a 14-minute response time. We had 38 operational members in different capacities. Mostly we had six full-time members for one week of staffing. Now we have a paramedic in each station on each shift. We had a lot of great volunteers that became full time members, one that lives across the street and jumps on the pumper. There was a medic 32 call where the ambulance was in Ivins that got dispatched but no one was in the station. That caused a 14 minute staff delay to respond. There were 102 responses for that ambulance crew. A call on Old Hwy 91 crews responded and it was 27 minutes to get the pumper. The fire engine has our extrication tools. The fatal fire New Years Eve in 2017 crews were asked to expedite while multiple subjects tried to hose down a house. These things sparked us to do the 48/96 and look at the staffing issue immediately. It is absolutely the right decision to staff the stations. Reserve staff that are part-time fill slots and then we use a full-time member. We have six staff on, per day, and three rigs in service. If we are missing an employee, it is an option to shut down the service. We have not done that yet and he would urge them not to do that. In August we had our ISO rating and outside of that response times were down to 8 minutes. We sent two full-time members to Center Street to staff that. This is our current staffing configuration. We reassessed our ISO rating and residents in the Kayenta area has some concerns and sunrise engineering has provided heat maps and station location suggestions. He would like to bring that discussion back on the Master Capital Facilities Improvement Plan and reassess where a potential station could go. How many stations and do we want a ladder truck? How are we going to pay for it? Those are all discussions. Captain Devin Hill has 15 years in the fire service and came from Clark County Nevada and responded to a call on the 4th of July last year. Our staff is how it is now and had a rapid response time and a row of trees on fire that extended over to the neighbors. He will go over the benefits of having six members. Captain Devin Hill stated they responded from the Rachel Station with three people on the engine and the fourth brought the ambulance on scene, and right away they were able to get water on fire. We pulled hose line and used the master stream monitor on top of the engine to get water out quickly without having to stretch a line out, and it worked out well. We got it knocked down within just a few minutes of being on scene. Chief Andy Parker stated that as incident commander and living in Ivins, Chief Con Fulde was able to respond from home. We filled the pump position with Captain Adam Heyder who has 29 years of fire service with DNR and is qualified to operate the pump. Constant staffing and having six people on scene is making a difference. Should we down our resource for a day, or do something different with our staffing and not give part-time members full-time jobs? His answer is no. The six-person team is essential. Captain Mark Youngberg is a long-time Santa Clara firefighter since 2007 and has been on three cardiac arrests in the last year. He was given an award and a gentleman that he brought back to life attended. Captain Mark Youngberg stated historically nationwide, only 10% of cardiac arrest victims survive and 70% of those cardiac arrests happen in the home. Lack of CPR training and defibrillators in the home are a big factor of their survival. There are multiple positions for team dynamics for cardiac arrest. First, we need a team leader who controls the scene and makes the call for medication, CPR, defibrillation. We have an individual for compression and another for defibrillation and monitoring. We have an airway person and vital because not only are we providing high quality compressions, but we need to reoxygenate their bodies as well. We need a timer, so we know exactly how much time has passed from the last shock, medication given and so on. There is a compression coach to make sure compressions are high quality and that we go fast and deep enough and cause minimal damage. We see better outcomes with these team dynamic standards. He has been a member of the Santa Clara Fire Department since 2007 and in the beginning, it took us some time to get there to treat patients. Since this new model of constant staffing, we have had three cardiac arrest saves. ROSC or Return of Spontaneous Circulation gets their heart beating on their own and breath on their own and we are able to get them to hospital for definitive care. We had an incident at the pickleball court in Santa Clara and a four-minute response time, having to go all the way around the field for access. We were able to take over CPR and use the defibrillator and within eleven minutes we achieved ROSC and took the patient to transport to the hospital. With the current staffing we are able to provide a much higher quality of care in a timely manner. Before the merger we would have to stand by for a crew, which causes extreme stress not only for patients, but for the responders wanting to get there quickly. Captain Jason Monahan stated his call was off of Old Hwy 91 mile marker 14 about 3:00. He was on Medic 32, and we also had Engine 31 and Medic 31 enroute. We were delayed because we weren't the initial dispatch, but arrived on scene and went past the incident to find a better route and access point. Medic 31 was the first arriving unit and our firefighter had one patient trapped in a vehicle, one ejected and one possible patient on the roadway. He arrived shortly after and was the first Captain on scene, so he established command. One critical ejection and one critical trapped in the vehicle. Roof extrication typically has someone on patient care, 2-3 people working on the extrication. We couldn't get access to the vehicle because it wasn't stable, so we had to stabilize the vehicle and then cut the roof off to extricate. Three people executed that, but it was delayed just for how much had to be done before we could get to her. Transition to roadway was a challenge because we had lost three with transporting the ejection, so we only had three other personnel to move the patient back up to roadway and we ended up acquiring law enforcement to help us do that. It was a climb up a sandy embankment and not the best footing, but we were able to do it. We typically put a rope system in place, but we made it work. Chief Andy Parker stated again, six members are valuable. The ambulances are valuable to get patients off to be seen quicker. Cross-staffing helps. There is an attachment of the costs available for review in Ivins City. Gold Cross mutual aid shows on the top and the bottom is when they used to come and help us. We don't rely on them much anymore. If we closed down we would rely on this mutual aid more. The fee schedule is also in the attached packet. The amount we can bill for mitigation is pretty high. He is looking forward to recouping some County fees. Staffing requirements when we go into a building, we have to have two people inside and two people out. Six people make that easy. Constant staffing-when maybe a Captain is off, we fill it with another Captain, so we have that experience there. That is a requirement. He and Con Fulde should not be responding to calls in an emergency capacity. That is an FLSA violation. President Bush put into action that you have to have an incident commander on the scene and doing accountability so that when someone is on the inside of a house fighting a fire, there is someone there keeping that accountability. We respond technically when we are not supposed to because it is the right thing to do and to try to provide that coverage. We are down to three part-time members on a 48/96 shift and can only do that so long until they are out of hours. We need to fix that soon. Our overtime budget could go over. We can hire six more part-time members at 18K for each and three months' time. He wants those three to have benefits and be full-time. We can get you those numbers to show those costs. This fiscal year he is recommending those three Battalion Chiefs and hire two in March of next year. We need to get those full-time supervisors in place. Then we have about 10 reserves that can cover and fill in and they work part-time to try to cut down those overtime costs. Mayday red boxes are for if a firefighter goes missing or is trapped in a fire or any incident, then we have to go through this NFPA procedure. That is why we need those duty Battalion Chiefs. St George, Washington and Hurricane have them. It is standard. 160 Battalion Chief responses a year shows all the things they will bring to the table. He is requesting part-time office staff to invoice, schedule, do document management, document prep. It took about 100 hours and he put this presentation together himself. Hundreds of Wild Land receipts to scan and put into the checkbook. Issuing burn permits, fee schedule for fire prevention and collecting all that data to manage it. The reserve fire fighter's last budget were combined into the salary and wages costs. We need to give them their own line item as part-time wages to account for that, about 24K and they covered 56 open shifts. He doesn't have that in his current budget but if you want to keep our reserves, we have some fine long-time people that fill movie shoots and Tuacahn events and help out with the Iron Man. They are a benefit to our organization. We would like to keep them. They have to do OSHA respiratory requirements and everything that the full-timers do to be in compliance, so that is the cost there. Potential cost for personnel is 2.61 in July, but if we wait to March for Battalion Chiefs, it goes down for the fiscal year. Level 3A is our current protection level and we need to be a Level 4 which is a standard active shooter. We received our vests through a grant and the fit is not proper. That is about $800 a member to outfit with the proper ballistic plates. Asher policy is a County policy in place that allows Fire and EMS to come in and help immediately after the threat is negated. Radios are a UCA requirement and in two phases and that will come in probably by the end of the year and it is a huge cost. We have to outfit every mobile and that is 13 radios and handhelds replaced. Headsets in the 1998 Pierce Engine currently has no headset so when they run the 120 decibel growler they can't talk to each other. It is an OSHA requirement and about 8K. Generators have been deferred for several years at the station. The Rolls Royce is 150 kilowatts, but he is proposing a household generator at 19 kilowatts. That's about 20K-25K for each station. If the power goes out like last July, there is no wifi, no radio power, the cell phone backup. We can't keep kicking this down the road. That just keeps our doors open and our alerting system going. It is natural gas and automatic. Extrication tools-jaws of life equipment is about 35K and we would like to replace the blades on the current tool and get things inspected, which is a requirement. The new purchase would be for tools at the Center Street Station. Our tools are a mixed and matched set, so we can't use them together. 35K for spreader and cutter. Center Street modifications is that we have a female firefighter working and sleeping in the open area with personal belongings in view. The bathroom is already OSHA compliant. It is unaccommodating so we would like to get partitions in that common area for privacy. We don't want to do a big remodel if we build a new station in the near future. Health and wellness-OSHA respiratory compliance, we do the same as St George at about 22K. Gym equipment needs replaced and studies show it reduces accidents, illness and workers comp, and is good comradery. Ladder truck we know that ISO requires if we have more than five building above three-stories we need a ladder company. It will raise our ISO rating and he proposes a ladder truck. They are all very costly, around 1.8-2 million dollars. A pumper is 1.2 million and doesn't have a ladder. He has some solutions for funding this and it will probably run 1300 calls and be the primary response out of the Rachel Station and the truck Ivins bought will come to Center Street and replace our old Ivins fire truck. It will be a paramedic ladder and does a hoist operation with just one person. Our current tallest ladder is 24 feet, and that truck is what we use on most of our fires. There are 28 buildings that need a ladder truck and increasing. We need to replace an ambulance. That has 163K miles on it. There is a letter in your packet from our EMS Director and the condition of our ambulance. If it goes out to service and is 5K to fix, we use the medic ambulance with 107K miles, and it had a power steering pump problem. We had to call out a mobile mechanic on a Saturday. While looking at that, the tires are 12 years old and replaced 75% of the tires. Six tires. You can look at the detailed expense accounts sheet. They had enough tread depth, but they were expired. We need to keep ahead of that and have an ambulance replacement program every 5-7 years. Josh Jensen in Ivins handles all the light maintenance on our vehicles, and he does a fantastic job. He did a mechanical report on this. He knows about our equipment that he is servicing and the concerns. The ambulance we got from the County was 285K through a grant and is now around 400K. We need to replace the Ivins ambulance. We could do a 68K seven-year lease and there are other finance options. There has been a question on Wild Land and is it worth it? Should we do it? He thinks it is valuable. Captain Adam Heyder stated he is willing to come to City Council to go into these agreements in depth with all these new faces. Most cities have signed an agreement with the State of Utah to participate in the Wild Land Fire Program. Those cities agreed to do that internally in their own city and that's through mitigation or homeowners, stuff that we can track. 25% can be capacity buildup like purchasing equipment or apparatus. 25% is education and public relations and with the amount of training we do annually that helps cover that. Qualifications are lots of hours every year to get training and to get to leadership positions. Part of that process is getting outside of these cities into larger fires to get those qualifications, and not just sitting in a classroom and written tests, although that is a small portion of it. You have to be evaluated on, to get those qualifications. We already outfitted our full-time staff. We know they are trained. We are not getting a lot of applicants anymore because people need full-time work. People can't pay rent only working six months out of the year. Their experience is invaluable and the fuel management benefits like burning tamarisk piles and going throughout the cities and helping homeowners burn piles, so it is done safely so we don't have issues there. In this agreement, if we need aircraft or other crews outside of our mutual aid, our federal partners step in and those costs are covered through the program. There is a ten-year average assessed along with the risk that they put a dollar amount to. One fire could bankrupt a city with the cost of mobilizing incident management team and the aircraft and all the locals and then a million or two in operational costs a day. The agreement signed in 2020 will expire this next year. Chief Andy Parker stated that assessment fees is mitigation work that we are going to be charging for. That is about 50K a year in new revenue. Wild Land is in the 300K range, depending on deployments. About 60K an incident. Ambulance billing is projected to increase 5-800K and because we have the paramedic level now, we are charging a higher rate to insurance companies. We have 50% deductibles. Those are some of the challenges with the ambulances. Impact fees is how to pay for the ladder truck. We want to reassess our impact fee in the Capital Facilities Plan. Ivins is built but Santa Clara still has some coming through. We need to get it on the study so we can charge for that impact fee and get that equipment. If it is not on there, we can't. We have about 600K and have been saving for a ladder truck. Lance Haney stated that in the interest of time he will summarize on tax revenue and send out an email. It is good news. We can do a quarter percent option and we are not all locked to the same amount and the votes actually count for the city it is in. We are hopeful we will see it go through. The main message is we are fixing a problem from last year that is better for everyone. Councilmember Sharon Gillespie stated that in the budget packet it states that 58.33 percent of the fiscal year has expired and shows that 73% has been used. He is already over budget by about 20%. Chief Andy Parker stated yes primarily for Wild Land, but we get that revenue back. Any major repair or overtime. Councilmember Sharon Gillespie inquired if he anticipated another budget amendment? Chief Andy Parker stated yes potentially. Councilmember Kevin Smith stated you spent 33K to equip volunteer firefighters but had no response. Why is that? What should we be doing to get volunteers? Chief Andy Parker stated that Cache Valley has a representative that posted a video on response of volunteerism dwindling, but our cost of living is very expensive. St George provided benefits he believes. He can send that video to them on how to incentivize volunteers. Mayor Hart stated that the fire logo shows rescue and that is a County function we are not part of. Are there costs associated with having a rescue component? Chief Andy Parker stated no we respond to rescue when they dispatch us. It is like hazmat or active shooter. His job is to be forward-thinking and plan for those calls. Our EMS boundaries mean that we are the primary provider of EMS in Snow Canyon. No one else. Not even search and rescue. He wants to be able to help and work together when a call like that happens. Mayor Hart stated he would like to see the proposed budget information for Fire and EMS. Is that prepared? Brock Jacobsen stated no, we have our City Council meeting on Feb 7th. Mayor Hart stated in the presentation it was 3.19 million. Councilmember Kevin Smith stated it is an average increase of 8% a year. Chief Andy Parker stated the budget for Wild Land is 330K. Mayor Hart inquired if that number included all you proposed that the department needs? Chief Andy Parker stated yes, and it is flexible on staffing to March 2025. He and Debbie Bannon did not discuss personnel compensation, because they don't know yet what that decision will be. Councilmember Ben Shakespeare stated that when we hit fiscal year 2025 as proposed, do we flat line at that point? A lot of this is we have full-time staff at two stations and have doubled our staff. You have accelerated that plan which we agreed to. Do we see it flat line after that? Chief Andy Parker stated absolutely because there is data that we rarely ask for mutual aid. We handle what we need to handle in-house and help other organizations. Councilmember Ben Shakespeare stated we have a great service, and we wanted this great service, but it comes at a cost and the house bill going through is still a tax. Essentially, we kick the can to the County to do it. The second question is your projected reimbursements. That is almost a 500K increase. Are we projecting that back in? Chief Andy Parker stated no. That was projected from the vendor. Councilmember Ben Shakespeare inquired how that affects the proposed budget? Brock Jacobsen stated that you flat line in personnel, but costs come up every few years in maintenance. Councilmember Ben Shakespeare stated he is directing that at personnel because it is expensive, totally worth it, but expensive. Brock Jacobsen stated as far as revenue he would not budget even close to 800K in our budget. We are waiting to see what the vendor provides but not going to 800k. He would be much more conservative, as he does in all revenues. Councilmember Ben Shakespeare inquired to explain holiday pay on a 24-hour shift? Chief Andy Parker stated 10 hours in our personnel policies and procedures is a day. We have 14 holidays. Brock Jacobsen stated that 24 hours equates to about 150K a year in holiday pay. Councilmember Ben Shakespeare inquired if that then gets calculated as overtime? Brock Jacobsen stated no it doesn't calculate to overtime. Mayor Hart inquired how many structure fires do we respond to in a year? Chief Andy Parker stated from 10-30. Mayor Hart stated major structure fires maybe 3-4 a year? Chief Andy Parker stated he would say more than that. ISO is not just related to structure fires but fire alarms. Councilmember Christa Hinton inquired if we are competitive county-wide with our pay and benefits? Are we attracting or losing people to other agencies? Chief Andy Parker stated that in July 2022 we had four applicants, and we hired all four. The next time we had 40 applicants. We used third-party for recruitment. They do in-person video for interviews. Mesquite is 60-90k plus overtime and just a 30-minute drive to Clark County. We don't make our money in hourly wages, but it is in overtime and the hours we put in. It's been that way since the '60's. Entry level is 48K and that is not super attractive. Most of our members live extremely modest and most work two jobs. Transparent Utah shows you what comparable wages are. Mayor Hart stated you have created an outstanding department and very professional response times. We will talk to see if we can afford what we are getting. We have done a lot of things right, but the trick is what we can afford. It is tricky for cities to figure out how to take care of the demands. We will look at both budgets. Councilmember Kevin Smith stated it is a double-edged sword because it is an 8% a year increase in cost, probably more. The population is only increasing by 5% and calls are only increasing by 3% a year. We have improved by 16% in our response time. We have to watch the increase of our budgets too quickly. We need to be safe and not faster than we can afford or surpass how much the population is growing. We just need to be cautionary of this amazing service and what we can afford. Mayor Hart stated to Chief Bob Flowers point, when we launched law enforcement, we already had a good crew. We knew it was inevitable to upgrade. There were a lot of things that were needed and that we could not stay where we were. Therein lies the challenge, if we are able to pay for what level of service we think we want to have.