Feb 03, 2020 City Council on 2020-02-03 11:30 AM

Welcome, everybody, to this meeting of the Dent City Council on Monday, February 3rd, 2020. It is now 1137. We do have a quorum. Call this meeting to order. We'll move through our Work Session Reports, Work Session 1A, Receive Report, Hold a Discussion Against Staff Direction regarding the Community Risk Assessment Standards of Cover Report prepared by Emergency Services Consulting International for the Fire Department. Good afternoon, Mayor, Councilmembers, Kenneth Hedges, Fire Chief. So today we have a summary that we brought in the consultant in February of last year to really kind of do a deep dive into the operations of the Fire Department. And with that today, I won't spend much time here. I'm going to go ahead and turn it over to Sheldon Gilbert. He is the CEO of Emergency Services Consulting International and is just a branch of the International Association of Fire Chiefs and is kind of the consulting arm. So with further ado, here's Sheldon Gilbert. Thank you, Chief, Mayor, honorable Councilmembers. It's a privilege for me to be here today to talk to you about this. Just a little bit about myself and ESCI so you have some context. I am a retired Fire Chief from Alameda County, California. I was the Fire Chief to the Oakland side of the Bay Bridge if you don't know where that's at exactly. I spent almost 29, 30 years there, depending on how you count, but I retired as Fire Chief in 2013. Moved here to North Texas. I live now in Lantana by Arga. I believe we're in Denton ISD in your extraterritorial jurisdiction. So I do live close and we've been here seven years and we love North Texas and we're really excited. My family and my wife's family is all here so that was a good thing. We appreciate the opportunity. I took over as the CEO of Emergency Services Consulting International about six years ago and it's been a great adventure and a great opportunity and so we do a lot of these types of studies throughout the nation and we have an interesting perspective and that we get to see a lot of different things. As Chief Hedge has said, we are the consulting arm of the International Association of Fire Chiefs and so that's kind of how we roll and move forward. So I'm going to talk to you today about an assessment and a standard of cover study that we've been working on for quite a while, almost a year, and it's been a very good comprehensive deep dive into what's going on in the city of Denton as it relates to development, your risk profile, and your fire and EMS services and how they're provided. And so we're going to basically walk you through where are we now, where do you need to be, and how do you get there and what are some of those options. Obviously, you set policy, we make recommendations and give you options. So hopefully today I'm going to be able to give you some very data driven, factually driven options and scenarios that you can take a look at and determine how you best provide that vital service for your community. Where are we at now? We're going to talk a little bit about your community and the review of the services provided, the review of your expectations and performance goals as they stand today, overview of your community risk profile. One of the things that this study does is it takes your risk profile of your community as it is today and as we think it's going to be in the 10 to 15 year window and how do your resources and your capabilities match up with that and how might you want to make changes in the future to make sure you're maximizing your protection for that risk. We're going to look at your historical performance, look at some performance objectives and measures which are simply samples of types of goals that we think are achievable that you may want to look at as a community and then some conclusions and some recommendations. So some overall observations and this really is important and a great place to start that you have a very highly capable fire department. I do studies from large 8,000 member fire departments to 18 member fire departments throughout this nation and I will tell you that you have a fire department that stacks up against anyone I've seen as it relates to a community of this size with this kind of demographic and this kind of risk profile so you have a lot to be proud of. So we didn't come in here and find oh my gosh there's these gaping holes and there's all these bad things happening and you have a crisis on your hands. You do not. So you're to be commended for that. You've made a significant investment into your community fire protection and EMS services and it shows. Your force is well equipped and well trained, very motivated. Your chief and his administrative staff are very, very good and they are strong and they're providing good leadership and good vision and they're taking a proactive approach to how to provide services for the future doing this study as well as the other things they're doing. And your facilities and resources are lacking to a degree just because of the amount of growth mainly and some of the stuff you're already doing as far as constructing and moving and updating some fire stations. So there was some areas where you can approve on that you already are working on in most cases and then of course there's just that big question on the west side of 35W and how do you address that with the massive growth that's coming in. So that's what we're going to spend a lot of our time talking about today. So why do we do this? Why does the risk profile and the standard of cover and response times and an effective response force, why does this all matter? There are really two key elements we look at from a fire protection and EMS standpoint and you break it down it's just this simple. There's a time and temperature curve that basically says from the time a little fire starts in a garbage can until that house is fully involved because of a flash over which means that the smoke and the products of combustion expand to the point where they super heat everything and you get what's called a back draft or a flash over that would completely ignite that house. It goes from a room and contents fire to a house fire. You have basically about an 8 to 10 minute window. You have an 8 to 10 minute window where that small fire in that garbage can can turn into a large fire in that house and we're trying to protect the houses next door. That is why you build your fire protection system around an initial response of 6 to 8 to 9 minutes and that full effective response force of having enough people to do what we call an effective response force and to do a coordinated fire attack together. There's a number of bodies that are needed. You need anywhere from 17 to 19 bodies for a single family dwelling and you need anywhere from 24 to 30 bodies for a strip mall commercial type structure and if you get into a high rise or a very, very complex large fire you're going to need anywhere from 50 to 100 people and so those are the types of things that we look at when we do this. Councilman Briggs. I recall that I have heard that the time for the fire to increase has decreased and so we are looking at how long our response times are for the new time it takes for the fire to expand. So what we have found is there's been a lot of studies done by UL and other agencies that are very credible with their data and old balloon construction with large diameter timber even though they have a lot of voids and a lot of opening and furniture that was all wood that was solid wood back in the day it could burn for up to 12 to 13 minutes before you started seeing those types of temperatures where you're going to get that flash over. Not that they don't travel up into these old Victorian homes and get into hidden spaces and cause some challenges but the overall spread of the fire was a 12 to 13 minute window. When you talk about the plastics and the different types of synthetic materials that we see in all of our homes nowadays from carpet to furniture to TV's to whatever that shortens that time frame from that 7 to 10 minutes. So when we're talking the 7 to 10 minutes that's kind of a modern day modern building material but modern furnishing type of time frame so that's what we look at. The other event sequencing that quite honestly we look at that is so important and this is why that first in unit and that EMS unit need to get there is the survival rate and what happens to that survival rate when circulation and/or respiratory drive stop. So when you talk about a cardiac arrest or you talk about severely compromised circulation or severely compromised respirations you literally have about a 9 minute window from a 95% survival rate to a 0% survival rate. And so what we want to try to do is we want to try to get a defibrillator or some sort of an electrical charge to that individual that can start that heart or get some assistance to open up that airway so that we can increase that survival rate. Your survival rates in your city are good and they are as well as if not better than what's going on nationally and so there's a lot of good things happening but this is what drives it. So when we talk about driving the response for a fire or EMS you want that first unit there around the 9 to 10 minute mark to be able to either oxygenate, defibrillate, do whatever if sooner if you can get it there and then you want that effective response force there in that 10 to 12 minutes so you can do that coordinated fire attack. That's really the premise for this whole thing, that's what we're looking at. So we'll look at service demand, what you're doing, your resource distribution, how are you looking geographically, can you get there soon enough, your resource concentration, can you get the right numbers of individuals there for the type of emergency, your response reliability, are you so busy that we have areas that are just not covered because you're busy doing something else so the next due district has to come in on a regular basis and then your overall response performance and how are you doing. We're going to talk about response times in the 90th percentile and this is pretty common especially in Texas for years has been using average response times or median response times and there's nothing wrong with that but a better indicator of true response times is what we call a fractile or 90th percentile response time. So when I say an average response time of six minutes, that's great, that means you're getting there an average of six minutes. If I had the three second response, I really like that response time. If I had the 30 minute response, I don't like that response time and that gets us to the average of that six minute response time. If I'm telling you at a 90th percentile what you're doing, I'm saying 90% of the time within this geographic area that we're measuring, you're getting there. That is a high acuity performance rate that will help you with that first due for the fires as well as the medicals. So when I talk about these standards at a national level and we talk about a 90th percentile, that's what we're talking about. So let's take a look at the national standard through NFPA, National Fire Protection Association 1710 standard for professional fire departments, which you are, you're all career. This is a consensus based product, they do things around sprinklers, they do things around response, they do things around training, they have many, many standards and they come up with standards that are targets and suggestions, they are not mandates. I will be the first to tell you, I travel the nation large and small like I said and nobody or hardly anybody can meet this standard, so let's start there. So when you see that you're not meeting that standard, you're in very good company but this is a target standard for optimized performance based on what I just told you. So when we talk about call processing, we're talking about one minute to what is your emergency till that station or that unit is toned out, that's the national standard. You guys are running about two minutes for fires and about two minutes for EMS. One of the areas we made a recommendation and there's already a number of things you have done as a result of this study and some other things that are already taking that into account that are reducing that call processing time, that is something you own that you can make a difference in. Our turnout time is from the time that tone goes off in the fire station till those folks are properly dressed, equipped and on the engine or the ambulance heading to the emergency. For a fire, the national standard is a minute and 20 seconds and for an EMS call it's a minute. Why do you get 20 extra seconds when it's a fire? Because you have to put on your personal protective equipment, you need to put on your turnouts and those types of things whereas if it's a medical you can pretty much go in what we call a class B uniform like your staff is wearing over there. I have a question, on turnout time, so the clock begins when the fire station is, I'm going to use your terminology, toned out, when does that clock start? When the fire station is alerted and that station knows they got a call, that clock starts. And then the clock ends at what point? When they hit a button that says we're en route. And so I guess I have a question for the chief, unless you all know the answer, when does that, I mean so everybody gets dressed, when does that take place when you say we are en route, is that when everybody is on the vehicle, is that when the vehicle is out the garage, is it when it leaves the station, at what point do, I'm just trying to get an idea of where these measurements are taken from. When the unit checks in route means all personnel are on the vehicle and they're all strapped in with the seat belt fully dressed. So I want to make sure I understand this because this is remarkable to me. So when a fire station gets a call, there's a fire at XYZ street. By the time that call comes in, everybody is dressed, not with their masks on, but they've got their gear on, I'm assuming, is that right, all the gear that we did when we put on, when we did that fire ops, except for our masks, the oxygen, or is that still? No, you're correct. So the goal is to get your pants on, pants and boots, and your jacket, then you're able to get into the seat and connect your seat belt. And then while in route, your air packs actually built into your seat. So they can be putting that on while the vehicle's moving. So that time is them getting their pants and jacket on, getting to their pants and jacket, getting them on and getting to the truck. And you are doing it, even though it's not a minute 20, you're doing it in a minute and 49 seconds. They won't point out, all this data here, as far as the DFE performance, that's from a 2014, 2018 data slice. So it didn't take into account 2019, since the study's been underway for over 12 months. I can tell you, we have seen dramatic improvements with that. We'll go over some of the technology that has improved out here. Well, to me, that's still even remarkable. I mean, to be able to get ready and get on, just literally, physically get on a truck in a minute and 49 seconds. So my hat's off to you. And we look internally, that's the only thing we can really control, we can't control how long it takes to dispatch. I mean, that's a different department, we'll work on that. Turnout time, that's really at our discretion and control as well, based on weather, road conditions, traffic, or anything. But we can, it's the fire department, can control turnout time. So is the time on the EMS for the minute also, it's when it's dispatched at the, at wherever, whether it's at fire station, or medic aid out by the hospital, and then it's when the personnel get in the vehicle and are seat belted in, then they hit the... Correct. You can usually, you can imagine hearing the parking brake going off or going in the drive. That's pretty much what's happening. Just to clarify, make sure I'm tracking, 90% of the time in this study period, we did better than that. 90%, you did a minute and 49 seconds 90% of the time. Or better. Yeah, or better. Yeah. So your average is probably lower. Yeah, that's what... Your average is probably lower. So you're not, you're not lagging. This is not a bad time. All I'm saying, and the chief brought it up, this is something you control. And so they look for ways to streamline that. Everything from we look at where we put our maps, who's looking at the map book, who's determining where the closest hydrant is, you know, so we just, we work through those processes to speed this up, but this is not a bad time. Council Member Briggs has a question. You mentioned the call processing time, and in the report, it goes into a little bit more detail about that. Is that a spot later on in your presentation that we can discuss that? Yes. I actually have the recommendations, and then I've got a list of the things you've already done that are moving you well in that direction, and that's improved significantly. You've also had a change in data management systems and CAD systems, so you're collecting better times, too. Remember, we drew data for five years best we could for '14 to '19, and so there was different systems in place, and so your performance may be better now that you're collecting data. My question is, and it'll give you time to think about it to that slide, is that good enough? Is that all that we need to do to get that one minute down? Sure. Absolutely. I'd be happy to speak to that. Okay. Thank you. Absolutely. So then, the parking brake goes off, and you start rolling, and then you drive to the incident, and drive time is what it is. You have to drive safely. They do drive code three, meaning with lights and sirens, and you have two challenges in the City of Denton that have contributed to your drive time. One is you have some pretty unique and intense traffic patterns and some road work going on throughout the city and freeways and other things that impact your response time. And two, you get your numbers skewed on the west end when you got to respond out there to where there's nobody, and we're going to talk more about that, too. So a combination of those things can lengthen this, but I will tell you that I think your response times overall, that's aggregated, overall by district look pretty good, and you have pretty good location, and we're going to look at that in a minute, where you can drive, where the computer told us you can drive in four to six minutes looks pretty good. So just to reiterate, the data that you're giving us today, is that the 2014 through 2008? I mean, the data you just gave us on this travel time, is that four years or is this more recent? Did you add 19? I do not believe we added 19 on this one. So since we started this back in February of '19, it was really the initial data dump was for four years, '14 to '18. We have went back and added some, I don't think it's this slide, some calls for service. You'll see what the 2019 data is. If you could maybe, as you move forward in those data sets, just give us some clarity on which one, if we've included some of the '19 data or not, I think that would be helpful to be able to interpret these. Absolutely. Thank you. We will certainly do that. And then you have your overall fire and EMS response times versus the standard, and once again, given all the indications we've just talked about, it's good. It's going to get better. It's going to get better as some of the road works subsides. It's going to get better as some of your stations get relocated or open up, and it's going to get better as you add resources in the last. That's why I asked about the response time for sure, because I know we opened the partnership fire station in Northlake, which really is to drive down response time on the west side. Correct. So I don't think that data is probably in here. It is not. Okay. All right. That's important. We have the Argyle response data because we wanted to show you what's happening in your area by your units. But now, there's a discussion to be had later on about a two or a three station west end option and whether Argyle Fire District does that answer or not. Okay. Yeah, because that's -- I mean, we contracted with them to be first responders and we built it for the very purpose of -- so I would want to hope we can have a discussion about why we should or should not include that in responses that they are making to the city. Well, the main reason it's not in the bulk data is it didn't exist. That's right. Yes, in this. That's right. But moving forward. But you're right. Moving forward, that's a great policy question. Okay. Thank you. That's one that's going to be front and center. So service demand, what are you doing and where are you doing it? I just -- we'll just show you a couple things. And there's much more detail in the report, but obviously I'm trying to keep this reasonably short. So just real quick, you're running about 67% EMS, which is pretty normal. These seven -- these categories are what we call national fire incident reporting system categories that we use nationally. 2% fires, that's a little high. National average is about 1.5, but your busy jurisdiction, it's not bad. You don't have a fire problem. Service calls and good intent calls are combined about 22%. I think this speaks to probably some of your college population as well as some of your homeless population that tend to be utilizers for service calls and good intent calls. Just see a barbecue smoking. There's nothing wrong. We just thought it was a fire. Those types of things. False alarm, 6%. That's pretty average for a jurisdiction of your size. And special incident or other, which is three. The other thing I would just point out here is whenever we look at these heat maps here, we put there where your fires were, and then the heat map is kind of where the incidents per square mile are occurring. Always what you want to look at is, is there a heat map or is there a cluster where you're not? And the answer is no. So that's a good thing. The calls are where your resources are. That's a good thing. And so you can see, you can see out here, you know, there's some fires down in Robeson Ranch area. Those kinds of things that you're addressing, but for the most part, your calls are occurring where you're at. I'll give you some statistics later on if you're interested, but moving and opening station 8 out here is going to be pretty important on Colorado too. That's going to help you a lot. Okay. Resource distribution. Just general travel time, your four minute and your eight minute travel time, which kind of drive those standards. Where can you get within your city using GIS based technology? You can see from your stations in the dark green where you can get in four minute and then the big green where you can get in eight minute. And if you were to overlay your calls on that, you'd see that most of your calls are occurring where you can get within four minutes. And then obviously on the west side of 35W, it's, you know, that's where we need to look at for the future. So one of the things that we are proposing that you do and that we did is we kind of based on geographical planning zones, we looked at each, each district and we tried to determine what the risk profile was. We felt you had a pretty consistent risk profile city-wide, so you didn't need to necessarily break that out. You can see here as an example, we looked at a lot of different things, but these are, these are target hazards. They can be different types of facilities that are target hazards, convalescent type hospitals and SNF facilities, skilled nursing facilities, and, you know, large assemblies. Anything where there's the potential for a high risk, those are, those have been identified and scored. We looked at things like your assembly meeting areas, your churches, your conference centers, your different things going on within the city. Where are they at in relation to where your resource is at? Obviously here in North Texas, weather's a deal. So we look at our, our presence in the, in the tornado in the wind zone and, and we weighed all those things and so we, we did all that together and then we put it into a comprehensive scoring and analyzing system and, and took a look at your risk and this is what we came up with. So your, your greatest risk is structure fire, EMS, hazmat, and, and, and human hazards which can just simply mean injury, traffic collisions, different things like that, that, that happened. And so what we ask ourselves then, okay, if those are the major risks, rescue and non-structure fires are, are out there, natural hazards and technology hazards not as much, are you equipped to do that? The answer is yes. You have a very good all hazards fire department, you do tremendous EMS, you do some good suppression, you do great EMS, you have a hazmat component, you have all the things that you need to address your risk. Then the other thing that we look at when we score this is we look at the probability of an emergency and the severity of an emergency and what you want to look at and when we get into some major metro departments, they may have a probability of emergency being called in at 50% but the severity at 10% which means they're responding to a lot of non-emergent stuff. They're responding to a lot of stuff that's not, not good. So then we start looking at how do you get those things out of the system. Not so much. Your, your probability of an emergency in the city is 43% at any given time if you coalesce it all together and the severity of that would be 32% meaning that it would probably be needed 32 out of 43. So 10% of the time or more you may be responding to something that wow, we didn't necessarily need to run out here like sirens but you can, you can take a look at what the severity is doing in relation to the probability. So all that to say you have, there's nothing alarming in your risk profile and there's nothing alarming in your severity to probability ratio and there's nothing alarming that you don't have a service that you need to provide based on your risk. So kudos to you. That's all. Yeah. Council Member Davis. Just really briefly, I understand we're, we're fully equipped to, to meet all of those, those different, uh, emergencies that may come up but could you break out Hazmat for us? Just as it being the, the type of call that it is? Yeah. Uh, I think the others we can understand just by the, by the title but Hazmat, um, can you tell us what that includes? So this means that the company officer who did the report responded to the call classified this and or dispatch classified this as a hazardous materials call. It could be something as simple as a, a fuel leak or a propane leak or something happening at the local level all the way to, um, you know, some sort of pressurized tank problem at a tank farm or something in a manufacturing, uh, you know, a chlorine leak. It can be, it can vary but 20% of your risk does have the potential. What this is saying is you've got a lot of hazardous materials. You've got railroads, you've got interstates, you've got, um, some, you know, some, um, transportation corridors, you've got industry, you've got manufacturing, you've got high pile storage, you've got a lot of FedEx, UPS and other type delivery things going on. So those all things all contribute and have different types of materials that can lend themselves to that Hazmat risk. So you need to be, um, prepared to respond to that type of risk within a reasonable manner and you are. Yeah, sure. Just to make sure that I'm clear and that folks watching at home are clear, it doesn't mean there's a, you know, a huge stockpile of hazardous materials in Denton but even like a car crash, if they have to go out and do something to deal with a fuel leak from a car crash, and you mentioned interstates as one of the factors that drives that up, um, that, that's taken into account in Hazmat. Yes. This is a, a reasonable and appropriate risk factor for a municipal city of your size with the different demographics of residential, commercial and industrial that you have along with your travel routes. I was a fire chief in Alameda County where we provided service to a National Nuclear Weapons Lab, Lawrence Livermore Lab. That was a high risk. We had plutonium. You don't have plutonium. You don't have any of that stuff. So, so that's, this is, there's nothing here that should alarm you. This is just saying you need to be able to manage those moderate to minimal Hazmat types of incidents and you are. You have a good team. Council Member Briggs. Well, according to the report in full detail on the hazard vulnerability, one of the recommendations for the future is consider staffing a full Type 1 Hazmat team because of this risk. So, and I didn't see that in this presentation, but it is in the actual study. Yeah. So a Type 1 Hazmat team is usually a regional asset, and so we're not necessarily recommending in that context that you go all staff one, but be a part of one. It could be a county asset, it could be something that happens with a number of jurisdictions. You quite honestly probably have the greatest Hazmat capabilities in the county as it is you in Lewisville. So, you know, we would like to see you consider a Type 1 is just a rating and a ranking that they use that would allow you to be able to handle the higher end calls as well as the lower end calls and be able to staff at 24/7. Doesn't mean you have to count, you have to put that on your own shoulders, but we would encourage the administration to continue to look for regional partnerships and regional opportunities as it would relate to Hazmat response. It's not something that happens frequently enough in most cases to have your own team, but it does happen frequently enough where you need to have that capability countywide. County Hazmat is also a resource that can be drawn upon to make that happen. So just to give an example of the Hazmat which I think people can relate to, like if somebody smells a gas leak in their house, they decide to call the fire department instead of the plumber. Correct. That's going to be one of those. If somebody hits a gas line and the department responds based upon either a 911, is that considered a Hazmat incident or is that just a -- how do you all classify that? It's really up to the officer on how they code it, but I can tell you probably the top two Hazmat incidents that the department responds to is natural gas leaks and that's usually construction crews of some type puncturing a line and they go in, evacuate the area if not further out, and then fuel spills, any type of motor vehicle accidents, semis, over pressurization, over fueling, anything of that nature, it's coded Hazmat just to track that data in the future. Good. Thank you. Okay. Good questions. Okay. So then the second thing that is really driving a lot of the recommendations in this report is your growth. Um, Circles is one of the top five growing communities in the nation and so I think it came out in a recent publication, but however -- wherever you place it, it's growing and it's growing a lot. And so we have three trend lines here that we put in the report that we wanted you to see that takes a look at population projections because population drives service delivery. Populations make call happen. Calls happen. People create calls. And if you look at your trend line based on what your calls have done already over 2040, you're going to -- you know, you're going to see your population go up over 200,000. If you look at what the North Texas Council of Governments is projecting, they were a little more conservative, but if you look at your Denton Plan 2030, you guys were even more aggressive. So somewhere in the middle lies the reality of what's going to happen here over the next 20 to -- 20 to 30 years, but it is safe to say that this is probably going to drive a call volume of 4 to 5 to 6 percent a year increase on your fire department. >> Councilmember Briggs has a question. >> And so that means that from what I read that it's at twice the rate as the population growth, right? So our calls are increasing. That's twice the rate. And so it said something about us or -- I don't know if it's citywide or the fire department, but adopting all risk, all hazards approach when this happens, is that something that we need to consider? >> So I think you do adopt -- so a community risk reduction plan is something that is kind of comprehensively looking at all the risk in your community and how can you reduce those risks before the response. You know, it's looking at preventative -- how do you prevent falls for the elderly with areas like Robeson Ranch and other senior and retirement communities coming in? Or how do you deal with trends you're seeing with the homeless? How do you deal with trends you're seeing with the students? So there's a lot of different things that a community risk reduction can help you temper that call increase. But a certain amount of it's just going to happen because you're going to have more people. We talked a little bit in there about, you know, community paramedicine and what value there might be in kind of taking, you know, a holistic approach to that. Are there things you can do that you can handle without lights and sirens? So there's a lot of different things you can look at that will allow you to move forward and manage this risk. But yes, a full community risk reduction plan would be beneficial for your community in the future. Number of calls, you can see 18 to 19 probably had a pretty significant increase compared to the rest. I think it was around 9%. You've been averaging 3 to 5. We think you're going to be somewhere between 4 and 6. I can't tell you exactly why that happened in 18 to 19. I don't know. The chief's got a solid reason other than, you know, we changed some of our data collection and or just the growth. I think a lot is just the growth. I mean, just talking to our crews on the street, just the amount of call volume they handle. We did move to a new records management system in February of 2019. So now we're really able to get accurate data and able to analyze that. But at this point, we really don't have anything other than just calls are up. We didn't see anything that goes, oh, my gosh, you have a fire problem or a fire death problem. That's not happening. Just proportionally, the calls are going up. So how do we get there? So one of the things, and these are the goals, and I'll walk through these reasonably quickly, is formally adopting response time standards and targets for your first due unit, for your effective response force, based on your risk, based on what you can provide, and based where you're at in your growth as a city. I gave a couple of benchmark goals just as examples. I'm not proposing that you adopt these. That would be between the chief, the city manager, and you guys to determine what you want to do. But these are the types of things we think you could achieve, that you could grow into, that you could continue to do as you grow and get to be a larger city. So a one-minute call processing time, a minute 20 turnout time, a travel time of nine minutes for the foreseeable future because you're going to have growth that's going to be occurring for the next 10 to 15 years, you're not going to have all your stations in place. It's not a ready, set, go proposition. It's a phased-in proposition. And gets you your 11, 20 from total, including dispatch, or 10, 20 for your first unit without dispatch. Council Member Meltzer has a question. Yeah. I imagine you'll get into this, maybe this will just frame what you say, but I was wondering as I review this, how much of the gaps between us and where we might like to be are structural and how much are just differences in what our processes ought to be. Here's what I mean by that. Travel time, it's kind of a structural thing based on where your facilities are located, right? But call processing time and turnout time, we've got a well-trained, on-the-ball force, but if the things they're doing are not resulting in hitting those marks, then do we have processes that just aren't what they should be? And so the answer is yes, to both of those. So some of those structural things you can't fix overnight. You can't make a road network appear in the West End, but that will happen over time along with some text-dot and different types of things happening. The two things you do control, as the Chief said, is your call processing time and your turnout time. Turnout time is an industry challenge, and they're looking at ways, everything from where you place your maps to who looks at the map, like I said, to who does what, how you do these things, just reporting an emphasis on getting on the units and getting out the door. Sometimes when it's your fifth medical of the day, sixth medical of the day to the same location, sometimes you're not walking out as fast as the other, it can be as simple in many cases as printing the results, and all of a sudden the competition between shifts kicks in, and guess what, all of a sudden that turnout time gets a lot quicker. As far as your dispatch time, I'm going to go over some stuff that they've already done here. And so one of the things to implement processing, to improve call processing time, they've updated their CAD system, so the electronics can definitely impact how quickly they can get the information in and get the call generated. Fire station software alerting is nearing completion. That's a huge deal, where they're no longer going to have to hit a button and say, "Engine 8, you have a medical at 123 1st Street." They're going to hit a button when that call is generated, and an electronic voice is going to tell them it's there. And so there's a significant enhancement there. So that's a system. P-25 radio systems, and just making sure that there's no repeater delays. Workstation flow, like I said, where are your maps, where are your people, who's doing what. I can't tell you the number of times I go to a department and a call comes in for a medical and there's four people looking at the map, or a fire, even better, there's four people, I shouldn't step out of the way, I forgot on my camera, four people who step over to the map. It's like, you know what, the only one that needs to look at the map is the driver and maybe the company officer to determine what's our route and what's our hydrant, and then a lot of that's on the mobile data terminal anyway. So it's just those types of things. So there are some systems and some efficiencies that you can do to get things moving. And then review performance on a regular basis and post results, that really drives it. So people, a lot of times, don't know what they're, how they're performing. I promise you, once you tell them this and put it out that, "Wow, the goal is 120 and we're doing 140," they'll find it, they'll hit it. Councilmember Briggs had a question. So I'm going to re-ask my question now, because this is part of that call system where two minutes is in excess and the one minute is the goal. And all of these three things, if implemented, does that buy us a minute? I would have to look at the data. I would say this combined with possibly, and I don't know if we have our communications manager here or not, but he or she could probably speak to this, but how you're doing call taking. And we put some general information in there. It wasn't to say you're not doing those things, but we put some best practice information in there as to how you're doing call taking and, you know, are you having dispatchers who are dedicated to the fire console and the PD console and how does that work? And so the flow within the center can buy you some time, but the technology can significantly buy you some time. The other thing that is a, that is a thing, we recommended that you do a mobile priority dispatch system, which is basically pre-arrival instructions and asking questions. So we're kind of hitting them on both ends. On one hand, we're saying get the call out, and on the other hand, we're saying ask all these questions to determine what it is. But there are systems you can put in place. So for instance, if we wanted to pre-alert and get the units rolling while they're asking their questions, this system will allow you to do that. And then after they ask their questions, if they determine it's a non-emergent call, what we would call an alpha or an echo call, meaning it doesn't require lights and sirens, they can slow them down. So you've, you know, you've got them out, you hit your minute, but at the same time, if you don't need to be running lights and sirens with 30,000 pounds of water, you don't, right? So I think those, those are all the types of things that are in place that they're working on that they will continue to work on. And Chief, if you get some more insight on that. Yeah, I'll just add a little bit more. So the new CAD was actually implemented November 1st, and that incorporates all public safety. So you haven't really had a chance to see any of the changes yet, but Council Member Briggs, just talk with our communications supervisor. We know those times are down. We just don't have that data to be able to report right now. So we're not at no two minutes call processing whatsoever. Another thing I point out also along with the CAD is AVL, Automated Vehicle Location System. That's been out in this fire service for 20 years, 15, 20 years. We have not had that because of outdated CAD system. We actually should be going live with that in the next few weeks. And that's where it'll just pin, drop a pin where the call is, you know, find the closest fire unit is no longer going to be district boundaries. So Station 8 could be, you know, over in another district, and if they're the closest one to that call, they'll get selected and they'll go. So I think with all these processes, what you've talked about, Council Member Metzler, this is going to take an account and reduce all these times as well. It's just taking time to get the technology upgraded where we should have been years ago. That's really good news. Thank you. Yeah. Turnout time. We talked about that. I don't think I need to discuss that much more. Your Effective Response Force, this is being able to get your three engines, your one aerial or ladder truck, two medic units, and a battalion chief or 18 personnel on scene in that ten minutes and 20 seconds, and all those things we just talked about contribute to that. Additional stations contribute to that. Additional personnel, when they're added, contribute to that. Your dispatching processes contributes to that. Your AVL or your closest unit response contributes to that. All those things contribute to that. But being able to measure that and adopt a goal and then measure against that will help you get there quicker. Emergency Medical Services. Now this is what I just talked to you about. In addition to a quicker dispatch, we also are recommending you look at a medical priority dispatch system protocol. This is a nationally accredited type system that will allow you to ask a series of questions and to go ahead and categorize a call based on its severity, send the right resources in the right moment. So we don't necessarily want to be going code 3 with a 35,000 pound fire engine and an ambulance or a sore foot if we know it's a sore foot. So those are the types of things we can look at and we can do. Consider implementing a community paramedicine program. This is something mobile integrated healthcare that's taking on great favor throughout the nation for specific target audiences. It's very helpful with the elderly, with congestive heart failure patients who are chronically calling 911 who can help manage their medication so they don't need to call 911. Homeless population. Different types of heart and diabetic and blood pressure monitoring systems. So these are things you can look at in the future as it makes sense. Your EMS quality improvement, your EMS system is good, you monitor your people very closely, but using your FTOs and your quality assurance programs to better treat and better resource the community is something that's going to be good. And then taking a look at monthly CPR classes, the homeless outreach to see, you know, 911 is the default for when all other options are exercised, right? If they don't know what else to do, someone's going to call 911. And so are we are we using it correctly? Using programs such as PulsePoint, PulsePoint is a powerful program. That's an app that everybody in the city could download that would basically put a notice out to you that there's a cardiac arrest that's being dispatched to City Hall. The nearest automatic defibrillator is here. Will you help? And you can get that one minute response instead of waiting for an engineer. So these are the types of things that are out there that we're recommending that you take a look at that you can enhance. Remember, EMS is about 70% of what you do, and that's pretty consistent with the industry. So my questions for the city manager regarding these options, so does this the process on implementation of these, does that come from the Fire Chief to you and then to us for policy or is it how how does this work? Yeah, the point in this exercise is basically to have an objective look at our policies, how well-staffed we are, what the incidents are, really trying to identify what are the next tools that we put in place and where should we be looking at ideally locating stations down the road. So as this plan should be sort of our roadmap for the next five or ten years, we'll take a look at it during budget time. You're probably going to see supplementals coming out of it in regards to this. And the same thing with the police study, which will be coming up later with their look on manpower. EMS is over the next several budgets, this study and what Chief Dixon brings forward, you're going to see those consistently in our recommended supplementals. Okay, thank you. So the other thing that became apparent is that you guys are outgrowing your supervision as it relates to spanning control. Spanning control for fire ground operations and emergency response is very similar to what we call military spanning control, which is ideally five to seven units, five to seven independently functioning teams. You are rapidly approaching a nine to one when station eight opens, and that doesn't include the three or two new stations, however many there end up being out in the west end. So at some point, dividing the city into east and west and having proper battalion chief coverage is going to be very important. That has an administrative and a managerial component as far as overseeing company officers and crews and making sure that everything's being done and rules are being followed and everybody's in a good place with what they need. It also has a fire scene and a command and control component where you have somebody on the scene from the outside looking at the building, making sure that everybody's where they need to be ensuring their safety, ensuring there's tactics and strategies and control objectives and that there's proper safety elements in place. So that's something that is not necessarily going to happen overnight, but that is something that you need to look at in the future. We put some cost to all these in the report, and just so you know, the capital cost for battalion chief's vehicles is about $65,000, and that's got about a five to seven year lifespan depending on how hard you run it, and then you've got your three battalion chiefs total compensation of about $600,000. So that's an ongoing cost. Goal G is to add a new airport station. You have an airport that is out there now that has initiated a second runway, has began to seek 139 rating. Are you still going to be an A-index with 139 rating? I'm not sure. I think the airport manager's here somewhere, but okay. So what that means is you're going to take larger airplanes in. They're going to have more requirements as it relates to aircraft rescue firefighting requirements and monitoring. In addition to that, you've got over a million square feet of industrial and warehouse space being built up around that area. We are proposing that if you want to use those runways in that 139 designation, that needs to be staffed out there. It could be a jointly structural and airport rescue firefighting station, meaning they could have an airport apparatus with foam and the different things they need as well as a structural apparatus, but it is our belief that that is something that you should be looking at as soon as feasible so that that is covered out there adequately. Once we get west of 35W, the response times get pretty long and the coverage gets pretty challenging. I'll give you a few statistics on that in a minute. The cost of the airport fire station in its entirety is about a $10.5 million endeavor for capital costs, and the operations of that for three captains, three drivers, and three firefighters, meaning it's a three-person staff apparatus, is about a million-four and some change a year. So a very significant investment, some specialized equipment, but it's something that is really important that you address. I believe your ARF unit is here, right? No, it's not here. On order? Okay. So that's already been ordered. So you guys are moving into the airport fire protection system. When you look at adding that ARF station, we don't have street grids out there, so we can't do our magic with GIS, so we're forced to kind of draw concentric circles as to what's 1.5 miles, which is a simulated four-minute drive, and what's a three-mile circle, which is a simulated eight to 10-minute drive, and you can see, if you were to add a station nine out there, the kind of coverage you would get on that west end, not only at the airport proper, but also in the surrounding areas with the commercial development and going in there. You also have the ability to look at the surrounding stations that could roll in for additional effective response force. So this one would have great value to the system sooner than later. Force Gold H is evaluate current and future station locations. Between the Cole and Hunter projects, as we know them to be, you're going to have about 12,900 single family units, 6,400 and some change multi-family units, 485 commercial areas, and 256 industrial acres. So there's a lot going on out there. So there's a lot of risk that's going to be going in out there as it relates to residential, commercial, industrial, just about all of it, probably some manufacturing. So there needs to be some sort of a plan to put some stations out there. If you were to put two fire stations in the Cole, Hunter Ranch area, you'd be looking at capital costs of 18 million and operational costs of 4.3 annually. We recommend that as a minimum in addition to the airport station based on the risk profile and the growth, you're probably going to see those calls and that risk and those rooftops and we're doing some study for you right now start to really happen in the next five to seven years. And I wanted to give you just a little bit of a statistic because right now everything on that west end is being covered by station six or station seven. And so I wanted to just kind of give you an idea when we talk about that four minute drive time, the amount of intersections and road miles that are covered in that four minute drive time are about 9% on intersections about 7.8% on road miles and only about 11.3% of the properties out there currently are being covered by that. Station seven, it's a little better, they're 41% intersections, 35% road miles and properties of 25%. So all that to say, we're stretching your resources to get out to that west side. So this is where, again, the data for the fire station with the emergency fire district is not included in what you're discussing. Correct. So I really at some point want to hear, maybe not in this presentation, but sometime from the chief on that because that was one of the very reasons that we entered into that partnership with them and contract with them to be first responders. So I think that if they were included in some of this data, some of that would look very different because especially that road that it's on that's fixing to be cut through to Robeson Ranch Road will mean it's a mile and a half from the Robeson Ranch development. So I just want to continue to add that piece of data because I think that's an important piece of data for the western part of the city. You're correct. So we're in year two of a 10-year contract with the Dent County ESD number one. So before this presentation, we actually did meet with the Argyle Fire Chief and just talked about expectations when we get to year nine as well. The amount of growth they're seeing down 407 as well, we will make sure we still have capacity at that station to actually continue this agreement after that 10-year contract. It's his assumption, yes, but they don't know the growth patterns as well. You know how much as far as residential is growing. Well, and I understand about 10 or 15 years out, but I'm talking about just looking at the data now as far as in the next five years, it will look very different because Fire Station 7 can't get to Robeson Ranch in that response time, those response time parameters, but the other one can. Yeah. And you're actually correct. These two station options are really more the Coal Hunter Ranch and the third station I'm going to ask you to be kind of contingent on whether you could continue an agreement with Argyle. It would not be needed if it could continue kind of a perpetual contract with... And had the capacity. Correct. Yes. Okay. All right. Thank you. Mayor, if I could also jump in on that. Should the council decide ultimately to move forward with that particular project? We've been working for the last couple of months off of kind of a city risk mitigation chart. There's about $10 million worth of contribution to the first fire station that has been identified, which will be required under the consent agreement that the developers would pay into to help us finance that station. If you were anticipating somewhere between 2025 and 2030, that first station would be needed. By then, there should be more than ample dollars to fund any operating costs. However, they would be basically reimbursing us through the debt service fund, the cost of building the first station. So trying to make sure that there's little to no impact on the taxpayers, and probably by that time, it kind of syncs up with Chief Hedge's comments on if the Argyle North Lake Station starts getting so leveraged at that point, that's probably going to be the trigger. But we've tried to plan this out to where financial impact at a minimum is mitigated and then gets down into a tipping point. At what point are we seeing that station get so busy that we're going to need to locate that station? Both developers have been required to set aside property, I think it's five acres or so, three to five acres on each side, three acres on each side, to accommodate the station. So we're trying to take this into consideration as best we can and understand for the numbers where those tipping points are. So on the ARF station at the airport, so that can respond to calls outside of the airport? Correct. That's recommended. That'd be a structural station also. So if they're out and something happens at the airport, did somebody else respond or how does that? I would assume so. You're absolutely correct on that with exception of any part 139 coverage. So if it's 139 aircrafts coming in, it'll be a pre-alert. So the crews have to be there 15 minutes before the landing and 15 minutes after it takes off. So it's going to be scheduled. Okay. Fantastic. Councilmember Briggs? My question is also about that because we have options and the recommended option, which I'm also in favor of, is the A1, which is the ARF or the multi-purpose facility. So my question again is about process for you. Are we going to look at these items individually coming up or is this where we give you what options we're in favor of during this presentation? We'll discuss it during the budget presentation. The way it's sort of laying out, I know there's a lot of recommendations here, which is what we've needed is a kind of roadmap. We are currently trying to work our way through the financing to support the staffing of station eight. Once that's completed, there will be at least a three or four-year absorption period should we be successful with getting the safer grant to help offset some of the costs of hiring those new employees. So you would probably see us sometime by year three or four of the upcoming five-year projections planning in the airport station. It all really gets down to how much new AAV we're seeing, the growth that we're seeing, that sort of thing. But right now, what is taking precedent with the fire department is making sure we can staff and we have a plan to deal with the station eight. The airport station will be the next one behind it that we recommend you. And just to reinforce what they both just said, this RF plus two option does not really address ropes and ranch. That's the RF plus three or continued contract with Argyle. So this is just assuming Cole and Hunter Ranch happen as anticipated. Here's the RF plus three. And this one you can see that we dropped station 12 down in the ropes and ranch area, which that one is certainly a logical discussion to have as to whether that is the best answer if Argyle will continue to respond. We gave you some different parameters and some triggers as to when you might want to start looking at building and staffing those stations and we are in support of you already looking for land and some infrastructure. But the best we can tell from the timing and the statistics we're seeing, it's going to be four or five years before those significant houses happen. And then I is add a second ladder truck down the road. This ladder truck is specific to being able to have the aerial device and to do the ladder truck type rescue search and other functions. It could go at station three. It's currently under construction to house that, but that was something that was probably not an immediate need given all the other things that are going on, but something that you do want to look at in the mid to long term. And the impact of that was about a $2 million piece of equipment and a $1.5 million four person staffed ladder truck. And then optimizing existing locations when possible is just continuing to look at what's happening with your jurisdiction, making sure that we're modeling it in such a way that if you do have the opportunity to move like you did station eight, you know, you put it in the right place to get your maximum bang for your buck, which you're doing. And as the West End development occurs, if things change, if assumptions change, we obviously want to continue to evaluate do we even have them in the right spot. And then lastly, and I'll just go through this really quick, we want to make sure that you have a proper amount of people going to these types of resources, incidents. You guys have the low rise structure fire, the low rise stuff handled, there's no gaps. But when you start talking about the moderate to severe risks, high rise and structural type fires, there are some gaps. You're never going to staff to be able to get everybody there. So it's a matter of automatic and mutual aid and making sure they're on the run cards for those types of events. So that's something that I know the chief and his staff are looking at, do we have the agreements in place to get the 25, 30 or 50 people in a timely manner without delay? In addition to potential mutual aid requests, are there other things that could be automated? And then lastly, long range planning, we need to continue to look at this as you move forward to see if some of the assumptions change, the risk profile changes, the type of development changes or something else that none of us see coming changes. Strategic planning and master planning are really important. So the five year recommendations is that second battalion, the ARF station, begin land acquisition, what you've done according to the city manager, and review your deployment models to ensure that you've got the right people. That's within the next five years, those are probably things you need to focus on from our perspective. And then down the road, continue to monitor and adopt response time targets, evaluate your EMS model and optimize your future station locations. So that's it. That took a little longer than I thought, so my apologies, but a lot of great questions, a lot of good feedback. So Yeah, a couple of sort of sensitive questions occurred to me that I feel I probably ought to ask while we have you here. I imagine you're aware by now that we're in a pretty aggressive catch up process on our street construction, which I'm confident in the long run has got to be good for emergency response, but naturally creates challenges in between. Do you have any input or thoughts, or do you feel we're doing it the right way in terms of how we do our road construction planning, or is that sort of outside your scope? Yeah, we didn't specifically look at that. I can tell you that anytime you have large areas of road construction, identifying your emergency services, travel routes are going to be really important so you don't close them all at the same time. So I think that when you have your road or your public works department working with your other department heads, that's one of the things we try to look at is are we closing the wrong thoroughfares at the wrong time. To my knowledge, you guys have done a pretty good job trying to keep everything open and keep emergency services flowing. There's just going to be some delays because of traffic and lane closures. The other sort of ticklish one, I've heard for years that there's differences of opinion on the right number of individuals to have on a truck, and of course, we deploy with EMS, so there's some opinions that between the two, that we have the right number of resources on the scene. Do you have a sort of standards-based opinion about what we do? So we tend to look at it, I'm less concerned about what you have on each vehicle, with this exception. I would never go below three on a firefighting piece of apparatus, which you do not. Going below three on a firefighting piece of apparatus can cause inherent risk that is not in accordance with industry best practices that could hurt you or someone. But as long as you've got three on that and two on the ambulance, and I do propose that we keep four on ladder trucks, because I want to see that emergency effective response force. That's what I care most about, is that when you have a single-family dwelling or commercial fire or whatever is your risk profile, can you get the 19 people there to do that? And the answer for you is yes. I do not believe you're overstaffed, and I do not believe you're understaffed. I believe you have a risk profile that's consistent with a four-person truck company, three-person engine companies, and two-person ambulances, and then you converge them, and once again, we're just dealing with the geographic reality that your footprint's growing, and so how do you accommodate that? Thank you. Appreciate it. You guys are right in the wheelhouse, yeah. Councilmember Dix. Right. On the operational staff, but on the administrative staff, there is a shortage. The percentage is not up to recommendation, so is that... So the admin is understaffed at 8%, it should be 10% to 12%. Yeah. As a rule of thumb, for a municipal fire department of this size with all the things you're doing, we see anywhere from 10% to 15% support staff to make sure you have training, prevention, emergency management, administrative support, those types of things. Now, one of the things that happens within cities that doesn't happen within districts is some of that is supplemented by other city departments. So your human resources department probably has an analyst that's assigned, so that probably didn't count in that count. It may have. I'll have to look back. I think it did. But your IT department is probably putting resources in. Public works departments, it may be handling your buildings and your fire stations. So those are the types of things you have to look at, so we use that as a rule of thumb, but it is just that as a rule of thumb, but I will tell you, based on what you guys are seeing with expansion and growth and all the hiring and all the building and all the things you're going to need to do, you will need some administrative support that you do not have to make all this stuff happen in a timely manner. That's my guess. Now, whether that's a fire person or a public works person or whoever. So I want to get you on the record for which furniture store you recommend now. No, just kidding. Woodburn's slowest. No, I won't hold you to it. But I did want to ask the city manager, and then I'll come back, because your slides slide 25, 27, and 30 list some estimated numbers. And is that customized for our city retirement et al, or is it a pay, et cetera, or is that general numbers? Those are pretty accurate numbers. Anytime you open a station, you can anticipate $1.5 to $2 million of ongoing costs, which is why we plan to try to absorb station costs over two or three years, and these grants have been very helpful to us in terms of being able to plan for that. But yeah, you're adding a couple million dollars a year ongoing to your budget. Okay. And then I don't know if that's a question for you or Chief, matter of fact, but can you speak to, when you're talking about help and some of the other ladders that you touched on towards the end, so obviously T.W. towers are significant, and what is our plan for those high rises? If we need to take action quickly, what kind of do we have in place? We have different type of dispatch call cards, so it's based on the incident, residential structure fire, one alarm gets so many different units as well. Obviously, that would be escalated, and we had to reach into our mutual aid pocket for assistance. For example, the squire on the fire, at that point, we didn't necessarily have a card that was correct for that. That went up to an unofficial fourth alarm, so we had ladder trucks. We had, I guess, almost five to six different ladder trucks even coming from Fort Worth as well, because those are just so uncommon. We have them on paper now, it's just the usage is just very infrequent as well, but the good thing about most of those high rises, they are sprinkled, so that as she suppresses the fire, usually doesn't put it out, it's designed to suppress the fire to actually get crews on the fire floor. So the towers are following that category of sprinkler? Correct. Okay, great, great. And then, because those two, that plan, and kind of obviously, like you said, infrequent as it is, thank goodness, that obviously is a priority just because they're so unique to understand what that plan is, and then I guess second for me input wise is the airport, I really do think, as we're, that's a big economic driver as well, so I really want to protect that asset, and I think we can get value out of building that up. And then I guess the last question I had regarding the community education component, are you kind of crafting something that you would, in a perfect world, have chief, or have you looked at that much? Yeah, you're actually correct, some of those actually, recommendations actually came internally at the pulse point, that's something that we had seen out in the industry, and then Michelle had brought that as well, really just more community outreach, what can we do, now that we have the technology, we're kind of dialing in on our technology, and how we're improving that, we can start looking at some more community outreach programs, we've got a CPR program where we teach one time per month, maybe up at night to numerous times, go out into the field into different businesses, and solicit where we can train their staff to help us, I mean, the old analogy, help us help you, that's what we're really looking at here, community paramedicines, another thing that's been out there for years as well, how does that really help the Dent Fire Department, the community, and that actually will reduce calls of service, so it's kind of a small thing here, and then you get the snowball effect, and it creates a larger result in the end as well, but there's a handful of things now that we have, like I said, the record management system, CAD, AVL, we have new computers in all the units as well, we're actually getting to a point where we're caught up, I use that term, in regards to technology, which is a huge improvement, now we can kind of start looking further out on how we can help the community. >> Thank you. >> Any other questions? Thank you very much for that comprehensive study and report, thank you so much. All right, so before we call the next agenda item, you all need a quick five minute break, you just want to power through that one, all right, power through, and you just get up if you need to be, all right, we'll go ahead and go on work session B, yes, oh yes, you sure can. >> So I just wanted to make a comment because I had been recusing myself on these items for, I guess, since the inception, but recently realized or had been notified that I don't need to do that, that what I thought may have been is not. >> Okay, fantastic, thank you for that. All right, agenda item 1B, receive report, hold discussion against staff direction regarding the exterior elevations for the police department renovation, substation and indoor firing range facilities projects. >> Good afternoon, mayor and council, I'm Sarah Hensley, the assistant city manager, and we have a very brief presentation for you today in regards to the isometric reviews for the CMAR projects, construction management at risk for those three items for public safety, which is your police headquarters located in east, east, considered east city hall, your police substation, and then the firing range. I'd like to introduce the architect for this, the company is brand center Carol and Eric Chambers is here to go over the slides, it's only about five or six slides, also just to let you know, we'll be back in front of you around March the 10th for you to approve our contracts that staff will be going through and shortlisting tomorrow, I believe, so they'll be doing some work tomorrow and then we'll have it back in front of you for approval on March the 10th. Now I'll turn it over to Eric and with Eric is Mike Carroll, also we have Chris Squadra, who you've met before from peak performance and then Larry Chan, who's our project manager with facilities management. Thank you very much. Again, as Sarah mentioned, my name is Eric Chambers, project manager for the police department projects. We are going to review the concept elevations for each of the buildings, we have police headquarters, the substation and firing range. And so I'll walk through those please feel free to ask questions as we look at each of these. So this is the existing police department headquarters and view. This is the view from Hickory Street. Currently, our scope of work has been primarily focused on the interior renovation, and there are some exterior things that are occurring due to those renovations that we are looking at here and just to point out some of these that we've looked at, one of the things that we're trying to do within the particular in the lobby is to try to bring some more natural light into the lobby, currently in the police department lobby specifically. And so one of the things you can see here is we've added more windows located here. About 18 months ago or so the police commissioned a local artist to do some murals for the facade, which these are actually the murals that have been completed. And they would be located if you're familiar with the building or some insets in the brick at the front of the building right in front of the handicapped parking, those murals were intended to be located there in those insets. One of the other things we're doing is utilizing the existing entry piece. However, we are pulling the sidewalk from a threat mitigation standpoint and looking at police department facilities, one of the things that we are concerned with obviously is safety and security. So from that standpoint, we have discussed pulling the sidewalk further out, taking over a few of the street parking spaces there. This allows to create a setback off of the main facility. Obviously, we can't get the standard setbacks which are 50 feet. It's difficult obviously in an urban setting. However, if we can pick up a little bit more at the front of the building, that would be beneficial. On that, do you plan to keep the trees that are in the front? Yes. Our intent is to maintain the trees and the canopy that goes down through there. This is coming down a little further on Hickory, kind of looking at more of a perspective. If you're familiar with the existing area, currently there is a pull in for the training facility here. There are two armed gates that are located here. However, there is no real fencing or screening at that location. So one of the proposals that we have is to actually add secure iron fencing with an automatic gate across that, down and around the corner, to kind of encapsulate that parking area. A few of the other areas within the building, specifically along this wall, we're proposing adding some additional windows, again, trying to bring natural light into some of those offices and spaces that are located there in the building. Again, there's the murals at those two locations, and then we have some additional glazing windows that we're adding at this location here currently. Oh, sorry, Jesse. Sorry. Just speak up whenever I'm... Sure. Thank you. If I'm not mistaken, excuse me, you mentioned that those murals were already procured, and they're just kind of waiting installation. Are those the Paula Collins murals that we've been in the works for a long time now? Yes. Okay. Yes. Are those... Do you know if we intend to have those installed before work begins on the interior, or are we waiting for the interior and all the kind of major construction work to happen, and then installing those? Do we know? It has not been discussed. My anticipation would be we would wait and install those later in the process. Yeah. You mentioned windows a couple of times, which is very great for natural light, but also could be increased danger. Are they bulletproof? Yes. Okay, good. Yes, they will be. Bullet-resistant, please. Thank you. All right. The next two slides we'll look at are at the Vintage Road property adjacent to fire station number seven. This image here you see is for the police substation. Currently, one of the things in approaching the site is obviously we have fire station seven that's located there and trying to create a campus feel for the city, not have drastically different buildings on the property. One of the things we're doing is pulling a lot of the materials that are being used by the fire station, such as stone and brick, the shed metal roof that they have, which also ties in with the residential areas around there, so you have a more residential feel versus an industrial or downtown feel to the buildings. Really, one of the things that we're doing, picking up this stone piece, this is the public entry. There's a large community training room located here. Again, that glazing would be bullet-resistant for the purposes of security. We are showing masonry on the facade with some a little bit areas of metal panel, just picking up to break up that facade and then obviously the metal roof that's sloped here. So these pieces kind of become an element for the entry piece for the public to identify the police station, and then obviously a one-story facade, again, trying to tie into that residential area there. Okay. Councilmember Boussard has it. Yeah, sure. I think just architecturally, the little tower is sort of pleasing and it looks strong and vigilant and very appropriate that way. I'm just curious if it's also functional. Is there a functional purpose as well for the windows in that area of the tower? Yeah. The clear story windows, as you see at the top of the tower, actually will allow daylighting down into the lobby area and kind of the vestibule space where the public will be. So we allow that to bring some light down without having to open up the entire facade to glass. And then the glazing over to the left-hand side there, you see, is at the training area, which again allows some daylighting into that training room. Councilmember Davis. One question and then kind of a follow-up, I think. I had kind of a similar question about the functionality. Is that an open space that's going to need to be heated and cooled and I mean, isn't like an atrium lobby with that daylight? Yes, it is a multi-story, yes. It's a one-and-a-half-story space there. I mean, I kind of agree with Councilmember Meltzer. It's nice. It's architecturally interesting. I wonder if it's a little much for a police substation. I don't know that we need to get the daylight, that it needs to be quite so high every square foot of masonry that you're – every square foot vertical that you go and every square foot of masonry you're doing on the outside is additional cost. I'm just not trying to design a building by committee. It just seems like a little bit much for a police substation from where I'm sitting. Well, yeah, I was just curious about the energy efficiency part of it as well. Yeah. So with the HVAC in that, obviously we'd have to take that volume into consideration in regard to heating and cooling and how we keep the air from stratifying up at that higher elevation causing it, obviously, the HVAC systems to be oversized or increased to do that. One of the options could all – we can look at lowering that. Obviously, this is a rendition of what we're looking at, to bring that down to make it not quite as high and still creating a focal point of the entry to the building. Of course, no one appreciates this council more than me given the past conversations about trying to really control costs based upon some of our cost for fire stations and things such as that. But I mean, I know how much additional masonry costs, and once you get over a certain height to add another story of scaffolding really is not that cost prohibitive. The energy cost would be the thing that would be, to me, the ongoing cost would be the most important. But also know that with our energy code requirements now and with glazing and different types of windows that have to be installed, they provide a tremendous amount of energy efficiency. So, I get all that. Before we started doing a lot, I would want to know what the cost difference is between something like this and something that might be more acceptable aesthetically to the council, and then also what the estimates would be on the energy cost. Because if we're still going to have the windows there, there's still going to be that same factor whether you're at the second story or you're at the third or fourth story now. You've got more air volume obviously. But I'd like to get an idea of the data on that as we move forward just to make sure that we're not trying to save a little bit of money to and then especially compared to some of the other things that we've built. So, those are my thoughts. Yeah, we can do that. Council Member Griggs. You talked about making it blend into the community a little bit better. Will the community or the neighborhood around have a chance to talk about the design or is there any feedback in that process? No. Yes, we'll set up a public meeting for them to look at the preliminary designs. But we'll also look at the energy cost and the tower differential of being higher and lower so that we can make sure the public can weigh in, of course, and then of course the energy cost. Thank you. Yes, Council Member Nelson. Just to clarify, I like the way it looks. I'm interested in what you asked for, whether it's affordable. But we're going to look at it for 50 years too. Sure. How it looks is nothing. Sure. Well, and understand too the neighborhood that we're talking about here is across, I say it's across the street, it's a really big buffer. And it's, I think if I remember correctly, it's got a brick buffer wall around the entire thing. I mean, I'm pretty familiar with that neighborhood. So certainly want to hear what their thoughts are, but it's not like embedded in the middle of the neighborhood. One of the other features that you'll see as we flip to the next slide is this kind of covered, there's a walkway between the firing range and the substation and also a security fence that, similar to what we have at PDHQ with respect to the security, again, creating an area where the public can be versus where the actual police department can go. So this is the continuation of that fence coming over. What we have here is kind of an ornamental decorative entry area, again, going back into the more secure side of the firing range. And you can see we've got the police department, kind of an entry piece. It's raised up mainly for the, to be able to get deliveries and the things that need to come into the firing range and the substation right there. And then essentially taking those same materials that we had on the substation and applying them to the firing range. The form of this building is a little bit different just based on the nature of what the use of the building is, because we have large clear span areas, obviously for the shooting areas within the building and then the lobby area as well. So you can kind of see we've kind of got that, again, that entry piece at the lobby area. We do have kind of a tower piece that sits over the lobby and then we have the office kind of control classroom area that you see up front here. And then as the building goes back further on the site, that's where we're getting into, again, the shooting areas within the range. Go ahead, Council Member Davis. Just kind of a similar comment. I understand the need for the raised entry and for a secure point of entry, but it's essentially a service entrance for secure parking and deliveries. I just feel like the entry piece is just a little bit much as designed. Mayor Pro Tem. I just want to be very clear on my stance. I think that, one, it needs to be a consensus decision, one. Two, we build, so we have seven fire stations, eight that's in the works, and the past few have cost, what, eight million dollars each? Not that much, but -- Five million each, and I don't remember these conversations. The police department has one station that they've outgrown and we've modified a number of times. I want to be very clear, when we have that conversation, unless the number is significantly high, I'm okay with the police department having one new station that may have some upscale features to it, comparing and contrasted to five million dollars apiece for the last three fire stations that we've built, just as we're taking input. Yes, Council Member Davis. I just want everybody to be really clear that there's no question that these buildings are going to be built, and we have bond dollars to do this, but every bond dollar that we don't spend on some extra masonry or some extra windows is a bond dollar that we can spend on interior improvements or additional change orders that may come down the pipe. So we're not really talking about whether or not the buildings get built. What we're talking about is the best use of the dollars we have. All right. So this is -- this is on the other side of the drive, so if we're looking at this, the police station is on the -- substation is on the other side of the parking area, is that correct? The substation is closest to the fire station, and then the firing range is furthest east. So if I'm looking at the fire station, all this is east of Fire Station 7, is that correct? Yes. East, yes, it would be the left of the fire station. All right. Okay. Thank you. All right. Any other questions? Okay. Proceed. Oh, is that it? That's all the slides? Oh, okay. All right. So that's all we have for our presentation. I have a couple of things that I just heard from the takeaway that I want to reiterate. So we'll get back to you probably through a report or a memo on just giving you an update on the cost difference between the tower, if we were to bring it down a little bit, and then give you the cost of what we anticipate the energy might be -- energy costs associated. The question was about a public meeting. We'll make sure you know about it. If any of you want to drop in and see it, most likely what we'll do is have the renderings at the station down there so the residents can either walk or bike or whatever over. And then the other one is looking at the facade on the outside area entrance into the firing range. Just look at that and see what that cost is as well. We'll share all that with you in the form of probably a written memo form and then let you decide how you want to go from there. Okay. You bet. All right. And we're here certainly to answer any other questions. Other than that, that ends our presentation. Okay. Any other questions? Comments? All right. I guess I want to give -- Chief, do you have anything you'd like to add to the -- okay. Fantastic. Okay. All right. Well, that will end our at least open public work session. Following the completion of the work session, we will now convene in a closed meeting at 1256 for consultation under Texas Government Code Section 551.071.