and let's call our meeting to order for the Police and Fire Commission for
Monday April 13th, 2026. Roll call. I see that Ed is absent, but he is
excused. All other commissioners are present. Public appearances, comments,
correspondence. Hearing none, we can move on. Chairman's comments, I have nothing
to report this month. So let's take a look then at the previous meeting
minutes. That was the meeting of March 9th. Any corrections there or comments?
Hearing none, is there a motion to accept those minutes? So moved. And is
there a second? Second. All in favor? Aye. Aye. Opposed? Okay, passes. Okay, then it's my
privilege and honor to recognize the anniversaries we have this month. And the
first individual from the Police Department is Lieutenant James Mature with
two years of service. Police support specialist Shelley Heathslip is with 22
years of service. And next door at the fire department, engineer Mike Didier, 33
years of service. And driver David Luft of with four years of service. And as
always, the PFC thanks them for their service to our community. Okay, next item
on the agenda is with the Police Department. And we can first take a look
at the March invoices. And Chief, it looks like you have a new summary there for
us. Oh, okay. Sorry, I didn't see that. But Becky, maybe you want to tell us
about the new summary. I added this summary just to kind of give you a brief
overview of what is all in that packet. Just to kind of give you the highlights.
If you have any questions or comments, let me know so that I can like it.
Yeah, thank you. Very concise. Good job on that. Okay, so is there any questions
commissioners of the March invoices? No, hearing none. Okay, let's then move
along to the police budget for the this is the first quarter January, February and
March. And any questions there? No, okay. Then we can move on to municipal court
statement. I don't believe if I have a municipal court statement in my packet.
Do we have one? Okay. Yep, no problem there. Okay, perfect. And then calls for
service for the month of March. Another busy month, 1238 calls for service.
Commissioners, any questions on calls last month? Very agreeable crowd tonight.
And last but not least is the Wisconsin information based reporting.
Any questions with that? No. Okay, hearing none, then let's move along to the
chief's report for this month. Oh, I apologize for stepping out, but it was important.
Okay. Yeah, I think first up I have we received a thank you card from the food pantry.
And I guess I'll read this to you. It says police department, thank you for your very
generous donation of $1,450 in March to the food pantry incorporated. It is greatly appreciated
by all. We cannot continue to help feed our clients without the wonderful support of donors
like you, the food pantry. Very nice. And was that a an event that you had at the
police department or? It was an event that was kind of county-wide. It had to do with
the Adam Hartwig Memorial for the Ozaki County Sheriff. Okay, very good.
And then the annual report and I guess what I included on here is there's a little bit more
descriptive in this year's report about the record management, the records bureau manager
Tammy and what she does and especially our police support specialists.
Because I guess there is a lot of stuff that they do that really isn't
noticed or I guess captured by all. And honestly with being short officers, we keep pushing
more on them each year. And in fact, that's what's going to happen again this year is there's a
few more duties coming their way. And sworn personnel, page 12, basically we had one officer
resign and then we do have an officer currently in recruit school at WCTC. He finishes up the
beginning of May. And so when he gets back, we've got we're going to have him go through a little
bit more field training. And then with the field training, we're going to do some jobs,
some shadowing. Basically, that's where he's in his own squad and goes to calls and there's
another officer field training officer that goes there and is just kind of there if he needs him.
And after that, then he'll be on his own. So that'll certainly help us out.
And I guess one of the other things I wanted to point out are our citations are down.
And for this year and what I would contribute that to is we had we lost the officer that resigned
in May. And then also we had an officer that was injured in September and was out.
And this was the first year that we moved Detective Lieutenant Herda off the road and he was
just doing detective work. So we have I guess fewer officers out there issuing citations.
Okay. And with that, I don't know if anybody has any questions, comments. There is some some
good information too about the detective bureau and what they've all done. He's been extremely busy
and he essentially he swamped and that's one of the things too we're taking with the records clerks
or the police support specialists. We're going to try and push some of the work
that he has to do, especially with search warrants and whatnot onto them
until we can get some more people. Sure. Commissioner, is any questions on the report?
Who did you say is swamped? Is it Lieutenant Herda? Yes. Yeah. Okay. Thank you.
It's a very completely report and it's it's always fun to look back at all the things that
have happened in the past year. It's amazing. Yeah. And to me that I guess sorry to interrupt,
but I guess the two biggest things to for us this year, I think were
reaccreditation, which is always a big deal in getting through that and we passed that with
flying colors and then national night out. And I think that was a tremendous success and
this coming summer, it will be up in Belgium and the sheriff's department will be hosting.
That's typically August, as I recall. Correct. Yes.
Chairman. Yes. Just comment. Yes.
Chief, thank you. Very nice report. Any comments, any additional comments on the CIT training?
I know you called that out in the report this year. I'm a big fan of it. Everybody is getting
trained in it, right? Every one of them. We try and get everybody through. They only do it one
time a year now. Yeah. And so it all depends on on staffing. And but every year we when they
have it, we send at least one person. Okay. Good. Okay. Any other questions or comments?
And I guess with that too, I just like to thank Becky, who did a fantastic job. I guess probably
her biggest thing is staying on top of everybody to get the information she needs for all the
statistics and everything that's in the report. So thank you. Another fine job? Becky. Thanks, Becky.
And anything else to report there, Chief? Nope. That is it. Okay. Good.
Okay. Then I think we can move along to the fire department. And let's first look at EMS
invoices for the month of March. Oh, can I interrupt? I'm sorry. I do have one more thing. Okay.
I guess I just wanted to let you know that it had come up. I think it was last meeting or meeting
before about the fines and municipal court looking at the fines and getting the cities
and villages that participate a little bit more of the revenue from those.
Traffic citations are going up by $10 a citation. And then later this year, I believe
it looks like probably fall. Municipal citations will go up $10, but that has to go through
counsel. Okay. And the traffic citations, when does that take effect? Or has it?
Technically now already. Oh, it has. Yeah.
Anything else, Chief? That's it. Sorry. Okay. No problem. Okay.
Okay. Let's go back then to the fire department. And this is the EMS invoices
for the month of March. And Chief, anything that jumps out at you there?
Not really. I simulate trainer update. This is actually some funding that we'll be able to
utilize some of our fat money for. But essentially we have a exact kind of replica of our cardiac
monitor that we can use for training. But with the new one, we had to update it to the new software.
So it matches the life pack 35 from the 15 that we have. So it's a really useful tool for our guys,
especially with so many new paramedics that we can pull this thing out. It's got a rhythm generator
in it. I mean, you can darn near make it wash your car for you if you want. So it's a really cool
tool that we have access to.
Commissioners, any questions? Okay.
Then let's take a look at fire invoices for the month of March.
Just one small correction here after talking with a finance director. Under operations equipment,
we did buy new particulate hoods, which are kind of the protective hoods that we were
during a structure fire that both provides some thermal protection to the areas not covered by
the mask. And also the new ones prevent some carcinogen exposure with all the potential
cancer causing agents that we're seeing in structure fires. We were able to get a grant from our
municipal insurance provider to cover the cost of half of these. Typically that would occur
within an operations budget. But because we were allocated funding for some turnout gear through
capital that money was moved to a capital project. So it doesn't come out of the operations fund.
Just a question for your chief. The turnout gear. How many people is that
outfit? Oh, so that is just the particulate hoods that got us 40 hoods. 40 of them.
Yep. So that is enough for all of our staff that are trained fire personnel to have one.
We kept the old ones as spares. So once if we go to a fire, we'll collect those from everybody,
we'll launder them to get anything out of them. So debris, particulate, whatever we need.
And then in the interim, we'll use the old ones that we had. So. Okay. Any other questions for the chief?
Okay. Then let's move right along to EMS calls for the month of March. A bunch of them.
Yes, 141 calls. About 12% for the month prior. We've already hit 420 calls for the year
through March. And we continue at a kind of gang neck pace already. You'll see that we are still
going to the town of Belgium, quite frequently. We've reached out to the town of Belgium and the
respective agencies to figure out what the status of that transition is. And we're not getting any
calls back. So at this point, we're just going to continue to operate in the best interest of
the patients until we're told otherwise. And your average response time this month? Yeah,
six minutes and seven seconds. So we're doing really well from that perspective, even when we're
going outside of the area. Right. Any questions, commissioners?
Okay, then let's take a look at. We've got mutual aid here also. Just two mutual
aids for EMS for this month, it looks like. Yeah, those are days that we are short staffed.
We're not able to provide a second ambulance at that time. So we did have two mutual aid
requests. But again, considering where we came from, we'll take it.
And then we can move along to the fire calls for month of March. Fire calls, we continue to be at
a breakneck pace. I just looked before I came here. I finished report 109 today and looked back
last year. We were at, I think, 80 at the same time. So we are moving right along from a call
volume standpoint. But yeah, response time still looked good. About five minutes and 33 seconds
to first arriving unit on scene for those calls. And I did see we had one call for burnt toast,
but we responded in one minute. Yes. Excellent. Excellent.
I'm not going to shame them on. We're not going to name names.
Tons and tons of people watching this at home.
Hey, purview.
Okay. I had to go there to get the good stuff. Any other questions?
On page.
Okay, Chief, then let's hear your report for the month.
Okay. So bringing this up for consideration and possible action this evening,
I did send a memo in advance to hopefully provide some context as to what we're
talking about again. And just to refresh everybody's memory, we did talk about this
late in 2025. But at that time, we decided to kind of table things just to see if we got any
input from the general public, both either to the commission or to myself. And I have not
received anything and to my knowledge, you have not received anything. So at the request of the
city administration, they had asked that we'd bring back the fire inspection fees to be added
to the city fee schedule. Although the fire inspections would begin a little bit sooner,
actually within the next month or two, the fees will not be implemented until the December
property tax bill would be distributed. Again, this is a way to offset some of the costs of a
service that were legally required to provide by the state. These inspections are state mandated
at least once a year without a change to your municipal ordinances, which we were able to do.
And that means we're doing more than 620 inspections throughout the course of the year. In fact,
last year, we did closer to 670 with reinspections. Currently, the full cost of doing fire inspections
is absorbed within the fire department's general budget. So residential taxpayers are effectively
subsidizing the commercial inspection requirement. This proposal at least shifts towards more of a
user-based cost recovery model, placing at least some of the responsibility on those who directly
benefit or are required to receive the service. I know one of the talking points last time that
we discussed were the 2% do fundings and how that partially does cover some of the fire inspection
costs. But just to remind everybody, 2% do's cover a lot of things. From training, fire equipment,
we just talked about the costs of just hoods alone. We just paid an invoice for turnout gear for
a new firefighter, which was like $4,200 just for one set of gear. It also is supposed to cover
public education on top of everything else. So we'll talk about our 2% do audit in just a second.
Part of that was accounting for the 2% do's funding, and it didn't take long to exceed that
threshold. So just to be clear that this fee does not fully offset the cost of the fire inspections
that we're doing. When we're doing fire inspections, we're sending typically two people A to be a
little bit more thorough. B, it is a safety thing for our people. And thirdly, there's another set of
eyes there. When we're out doing inspections, that's typically taking an emergency response
crew off or an ambulance crew off of the streets. Our call volume is at the pace now where there's
days where they can plow through inspections and not get interrupted. But it wasn't very
respectful to the business owners when we would come or set up an appointment and then have to
leave, come back, leave, come back, leave and come back. So we try to at least take them out of the
rotation if we can. Now that's not always a reality with our staffing, but we try to do our
best when it comes to that. When we're looking at these fees, they're generally ranging from
$25 to a few hundred dollars based on the square footage. And I just want to be clear that these
are billed to the property owner or the landlord, not to the individual businesses or the tenants
operating within those areas. I also think the most important thing here is it helps us serve as
a compliance tool. When we're out doing reinspections, sometimes we have to do multiple
reinspections. And this gives us a mechanism to both recuperate some of the costs, but also have
some sort of incentive for the property owner to not or to fix the violations that we found.
So this also included in this proposal has a some level of structure for plan reviews and those
type of things, something that we're not currently compensated for, but again matches other
municipalities. And just finally, this is not something that's new, it might be new to Port
Washington, but is not new to the area. All of our neighboring communities have these structures
in place. I've included their fee schedules associated with their fire inspections in the
packet for you to review. So with that quick summary, I'll take any questions that you have.
So Chief, with the fees, your fees I see are right in line with what Cedarburg or
Grafton-Sockville is charging or Southern Ozaki, it looks like, right? They're pretty much the same
fees that anyone would encounter in the county. Yes. And they're not excessive fees, but it is one
way of trying to recoup some of the time that your department's spending there. Yeah, and I think
is, you know, we see a significant amount of development in this city, particularly on the
north side, that this helps us recuperate a lot of the time that we are going to be spending out
at those sites doing fire inspections and other fire department related acceptance testing and
those type of things. Commissioner, do I have any questions?
Well, I guess my biggest question was that the last time we brought this up, it was brought to
our attention that there's the 2% fee that is paid for by our businesses for the fire prevention,
things like that. And that does not directly go to the fire department itself, but is brought to
the city as a whole. I guess my issue is that we're bringing forth another fee that businesses
are having to pay. And we want, I guess as the PFC, we want to see that it's actually allocated
to the fire department for their time that they're putting forth and not just going to a slush fund
for the city that they can use with whatever they want to. How do we guarantee like, how do we
show that these people are actually paying for something that's specific? Is there a way to be
billed that goes directly to the fire department itself and not to a city slush fund that can be
allocated to whatever the city actually needs it for? I feel like you're bringing in more revenue
for the city and you're not necessarily seeing that revenue being allocated for the fire department.
Is there a way to manipulate the way it gets funded to the fire department? Can it be
invoiced from the fire department? So that would be a better question for the finance director.
And you know, through GGF, I think it's important that that recommendation be carried through with
any action that you guys take. This evening, just to be clear, when we do get our 2% dues,
like we don't get the check directly to the fire department, but we are able to account for some
of that, all of that funding out of the budget we have. So that 2% dues, I just want to make sure
we're not getting ourselves in trouble from that standpoint, like that money is being utilized
by the fire department. But it's not like we're just getting that check over to us if that makes.
That's saying like 2% checked on the thing. I get that, but I feel like you're bringing in more money
for the city. And I would like to see it go to the fire department for what the fire department
is actually doing, not just a general fund for the city that they may or may not give you even more
budget. I mean, I just, that's my biggest concern. Is the police is bringing the fires bringing in
more? They're asking something of our community. And yet we can't say that it's being designated
for what we're paying it for. So I'm not sure. I have to tread lightly here. I understand
your concern with that. And I think, you know, I share similar concerns. I think the best action
for that is, you know, if this is something that we want to proceed with, I know that, you know,
from a finance standpoint, there's concerns with earmarking and those type of things for accounts.
But I do think it's something that, you know, needs to be flushed out a little bit with the GGF
and council. And if we make a motion on this, I think that's something that potentially could
be included in that motion. And Chief, the 2% fee that has very narrow boundaries on what that
can be used for, correct? Yes, yes. The 2% fees, although it's, I mean, it's not narrow, but it's
fire protection equipment apparatus, fire inspections, fire prevention. And then it can go towards
either wages or sorry, like retirement, like WRS or LOSA program. So it's, yeah, it has to be kind
of in those accounts. Okay. And as the chief mentioned, we did talk about this, I believe,
at the December meeting and tabled it at that point, just to see if there were any comments
from the community. And I've not received any comments. And chief, how did we put it out to
the community to bring up comments? This meeting, this meeting, knowing that it was going to be on
the on our minutes, our agenda in the paper, right? And I know, I don't believe it made it in the
paper because there were other things going on at that meeting that were more exciting.
And I know I had somebody today who asked me, like, what our meeting was looking like. And I
mentioned we were readressing this and they're like, I have heard nothing about this. And they
were just kind of like, tell me what's going on. Okay. For our agenda would have been
some correct for them to have looked at to have gone come here to come or, or the
YouTube are our viewers. Yeah. And this scene in back and the member was included in the
agenda packet that was published both for the meeting that we had last year, as well as this
meeting. It was published in both. Yep. Okay. All right. I just want to be very clear how it was
was brought out to the community. Okay. Any other questions, commissioners?
So would someone like to make a motion to advance this fee structure and plan
to the common council for approval? So it has to go from us approving or giving our guests to
common council to finance. So it will go the next step from here. I have already discussed a lot
of this with the city attorney to ensure that there's no potential legal issues related to this.
It would go to GGF and then it would be added to the city's fee schedule, which would have to
be approved by the council. Got it. Correct. Dan, is my chain of events correct there? Yes.
Okay. Well, I don't know how to make the, I mean, I am in agreement that this is something that is not,
it is being done everywhere around us. And I feel like you did the due diligence of researching
and finding all that information and putting it in our packet. I feel like it's legitimate
thing to do. My only concern is I would like to see that it actually goes for something that
is in the fire department, either an increase in your budget for next year. I just, I feel like
you're doing, you're doing things that I feel like you should be getting reimbursed for.
And if they're not able to guarantee that, it seems kind of silly that we're bringing in more
money and making a cost for something that you guys are providing service for, and it's not going
to you. But I don't know how to make a motion. Joe, that's where I need you.
I've talked to the chief about this and a little bit to the city. I think it's kind of deep water
in terms of the way that the budgets are done. I think the best we're going to be able to do
is motion to approve it as that the chief tracked this revenue so that it can be part of the conversation
at budget time. I think that's about as far as we can get. And I'll make that motion.
Okay. Motion to approve.
The chief will be tracking the increase revenue and we ask that that we'll ensure that that's part
of the budget discussion each year. Priest revenue and part of budget discussion.
Okay. So we have a motion. Is there a second to that motion?
I'll second it. Okay. Second. And all in favor of the motion?
Aye. Aye. Aye. Opposed? For the record opposed. Okay. Okay. Motion passes.
Okay. And you have more to report tonight? Yeah, a couple of things here. I'm moving
into the fire chief's report. Fresh off of our two percent dues audit didn't know that was going
to be such a popular topic tonight. This is something that's done every few years.
It was my first time going through the two percent dues audit process.
We went through with flying colors. Luckily, they were very happy to see some improvements
in our reporting, especially on the training side of things, including lesson plans, those
hours, all of that kind of stuff is important part of that process, ensuring that our folks
are working towards appropriate certifications. You know, some other parts of that, making sure
our fire reports are all done. They're uploaded directly. There's a lot of steps that go through
this process. But everything went well. So yeah, we should be good for the next couple of years
and free to receive those funds when they come from the state. How often does that happen then?
It's kind of a moving target. They send every three to four years. Sometimes it's two.
Sometimes I think it has a lot to do with how your audit went. If that makes sense, I think if
you're on the naughty list, you get audited a little bit more frequently than the other direction.
You just have to provide them a lot of data. Yeah, there was a lot of data that we needed to
provide a lot of different reports that we needed to provide to them. So we went through all of that.
It was a couple hours meeting with DSPS to go through all of that stuff. So but things went
relatively well. Okay, great. All right, next. So I just wanted to outline a process
coming up here for reviewing and approving the updated departmental policies and procedures.
You all know that we've been working on this for a while.
Be draft of at least we're going to build this out into sections. It'll be an administrative
section, work rules section, an operational section. So the administrative section is
largely ready to go, or at least ready for you guys to review. I will be sending that to Jim by
the end of the week to distribute to you all to have some time to digest and read through them.
I didn't think it was fair to drop them in your lap in the packet here and then be like, hey,
on Monday, I'm sure you all had better things to do this weekend than read through probably 50
pages of administrative policy. So hopefully over the next month, you guys can take some time
to digest some of those, and then we can bring them up for approval next month. And then we'll
give you a couple months off, and then we'll bring back the next set and so on and so forth
till we're through the entire book. But I would like to have everything wrapped up before quarter
four of this year, so we have everything in place.
And Chief, these updates, how old is the old manual that you're working off of?
2013. So it's time. Yeah, it's been time. Okay, good.
Yes, I look forward to receiving that. No, you don't, but that's okay.
Last thing on my list is just a quick update on the Public Safety Building project. It is now
at the pace where every time you go there, something is new and different. It's fun to see,
they have finally poured the concrete in the apparatus floor on the fire side, which was a
major milestone for us. You know, they're starting to get to the point where flooring is going in,
tiles going up, drop ceilings are going in, so it really looks like a building on the inside.
We continue to be on track for a June occupancy, probably a PD side a little bit before us,
but everything remains on schedule with hopefully our move in to be scheduled around the end of
July, or at least to be operating out of there by the end of July, because it'll take some time.
We'll get occupancy in June, and then we have to install the furniture and the owner furnished
equipment and all that kind of stuff. So it's going to take some time to do that.
And we can't really be operating out of two places, so we want to make sure everything's up
and operational and functioning before we make the move. So one more fish day at the current.
House. And this could be for either chief, any plans for a public open house?
Yes, we had talked about this. I think we had planned to do that during our open house in October,
where we typically do our combined public safety open house during fire prevention week. So that
was the working plan as of now to do it then. Good. And then everybody should be pretty settled
in everything in there. So. Okay, is there any other business we need to discuss tonight?
Looks like our next meeting will be Monday, May 11th, and that will be Sarah's last meeting,
I believe. Yes, sir. And if I hear there's no other comments, is there a motion to adjourn our meeting?
I'll make that motion. Second. All in favor? Aye. Aye. We're adjourned. Thank you.