Okay, let's call our meeting to order for Wednesday, August 12th, 2026, police and fire commission roll call members present except for Dan Becker who's absent and excused.
Are there any public appearances comments or correspondence.
Okay, you're in none.
As far as my comments.
Just one thing I had a long conversation today with a resident Mike Keller who's concerned about the bikes in the city and thinks we maybe want to look at some more either regulations or ordinances or education.
I have to admit I'm more a fan of education than enforcement, but he seems to be a proud. He seems to think there's a problem with e bikes motor scooters hoverboards those type of things. And I think it's something we may want to address.
So I just like to challenge the police department to come perhaps in September with some ideas how we can move forward on that or suggestions other communities have found to be helpful.
Okay, that's it for my comments.
Yes, sir.
Yes, go ahead.
I just want to be sure our current bike helmet law applies to any of these bike classifications true.
Yes, thank you.
Right.
Okay, thank you.
Okay, we can move on then to a review of the minutes from our June 17th meeting.
Is there any corrections or.
Or comments to be made on that.
Hearing none, is there a motion to accept those minutes from the June 17th meeting.
Motion and second, all in favor.
Hi, posed.
Okay, those pass.
Okay, then it's always the fun part here recognition of service anniversaries and quite a few this month in the police department. We have Taylor Russell with 10 years of service.
Jason Bergen, 25 years of service.
Jordan Cook, nine years.
Gatelyn Volm, four years.
Jacob Zagowski, four years.
And then over at the fire department, we have.
Jacob.
Oh, dwarf with five years of service.
Eric IBS, 27 years.
Nick Gilbank with three years.
Rick Colchen, 20 years.
Olsen, Melinda with four years.
And Jeff teaching with 40 years of service.
As always, the PFC.
Thanks them and wants them to understand the community appreciates their efforts.
And chief, did you want to say something.
So tonight, one of our officers.
Jason Bergen, who has reached the 25 year milestone with our department is here tonight with some family.
Because he reached the 25 years, we have a little gift for him in a very nice gift bag. And I didn't wrap it.
Because first of all, I'm not good at it. And all I had was Christmas paper. So.
We got a little something for you, but before we give that to him.
Let's say a couple of things about Jason. First off, I still remember field training.
Jason 25 years ago, we were both a lot younger and had a lot less gray hair.
But he's done a great job for us ever since.
Some of the things that he's done has been as a bike patrol officer.
He's currently our SRO.
He's been on the honor guard for the department and he's gotten special training in clan lab cleanup.
So sometimes assist other agencies, if they have like a meth lab, things like that, which is a little bit more complicated than your normal call.
So if Jason would come up, I'll present him with his gift.
And your gift bag.
Yes, congratulations. Thank you for your 25 years. Do you want to.
Yeah, with me tonight, I'm very lucky I have my wife Liz. Go to the microphone, please.
I have my wife Liz sitting over here with us. And then our children JJ.
From right to the left, we have Bella and Grant way on the end.
So, yeah. And I have a daughter who's at Creighton University. So.
She's starting her junior year. So.
Thank you very much for your service. Thank you. Just one question. What has changed in 25 years at the police department.
The easy one. We're getting a new building. Hey, no.
Starting out with no computers in the squad car.
To now we're like to the point where where do I sit.
It's almost like a cockpit where we're getting there tight. We got everything that we need.
Police has changed. Yeah. In the 25 years. It has gone fast and.
Yeah, I wouldn't I wouldn't change the path at all. So I'm proud. It's great city to work for. So thank you.
Thank you. And thanks for being here. You guys.
Mr Chairman, only 25 more years to go.
I'd like to make a comment. Yeah, I just wanted to add my thanks to Officer Bergen. Thank you so much for your service to our community.
And as you know, better than anybody, no one serves alone. So thank you to the family as well.
I know it's difficult to say goodbye to your husband and your father each morning and pray that they come home safely.
But Jason's done a phenomenal job for us and we appreciate your service and that of your families. Thank you.
Okay. Any other comments? Okay, then we can move on.
So we'll start with the police department tonight and let's review and discuss June and July bills.
Any commissioners have questions about the.
The bills for June and July.
Yes, I had a question. I did address it.
Through the city a little earlier today, but I had a question on the July invoices for the we energies,
specifically to the public safety building, because I believe it is still considered under project and that should be going to the project coordinator.
In reaching out to Rob VanderNova, I did get an email back.
The we energies charges should have been made to the project, not to PD. He will get that reclassified.
And then moving forward, we energies charges will be split between PD and FD.
And we'd question the parking lot lights, which again, they'll they're working on.
We hope they are because they have been on 24 seven since they installed them. So that's where that's where my question started originally when I sent it to Rob.
And as I explained earlier, that's a building automation issue and they're still working the kinks out of that.
Thank you.
Any other questions or comments about the invoices at the police department?
Okay.
Hearing none, let's move along to the budget.
And.
This is the second quarter budget. Any questions on that?
Yes, Mr. Chairman. Yes.
So if I'm reading this correctly, we're at 77% of overtime wages.
Probably. Yes. So a couple of questions on that chief.
If I just want to be sure I'm reading this correctly, if that were to continue, we'd be at 140 154% here.
Yes, this isn't like a pro rated door. Okay.
And.
This seems like, and I know it's not your issue, but it just seems like.
Every year we're over on overtime wages.
Is as we approach budget time and including our meeting this Friday, is this something we go to the city with and say, where are we kidding?
Every year, every year we go over when they like to know the real number or.
I don't want to get into the weeds on the political process here, but is it just.
I mean, are we in denial? It's over every year. We know it's going to be over. Why don't we just budget it?
They, they are aware of that also based on the meetings I've had with the city.
Yeah. So plenty of smart people. They know.
They're aware that we're going to go over now. Some of that.
I mean, the overtime budget fluctuates from your dear based on number of things.
Last year, the year before was particularly bad. I wasn't a chief then, but I can make an educated guess based on my position and what I know.
Because we were three officers short, you know, for a good portion of that, that year.
This year, I'm not sure exactly why we're over as much as we are, but typically the beginning of the year tends to be and particularly the summer tends to be a little bit worse.
A lot of festivals.
Yeah, festivals, vacation time. And when we're at minimum staffing, it only takes one person then to call in sick or have some other issue.
Paternity leave, whatever it happens to be. And then we're back filling shifts and that's where you get a lot of the overtime. And, you know, some of this, for instance, I don't remember exactly how many hours we had.
Because of fish day, but that'll be reimbursed by fish day. So, I mean, some of those, some of those hours aren't necessarily.
Are overtime costs. It's somebody else's.
Is there a number you can attribute to the vantage data center?
Vantage really hasn't aside from.
Issues.
And now that you mentioned that that's probably where a lot of this came from, you know, having extra security for council meetings.
If you want to attribute that to them, that's, I guess that's fair, but vantage.
The data center itself has not caused us.
A lot of overtime issues are main calls up there.
Because you've got a couple thousand people all who have cell phones that are moving around. Our main calls up there are cell phone 911.
There have been some traffic issues and they're kind of getting split between us and the sheriff's department.
And mostly that's, you know, sloppy roads because of mud and stuff like that.
And when there's a request for additional traffic support there, I know that I'm pretty sure that the sheriff gets reimbursed by vantage.
Is that something we get reimbursed for? Do we just not do it?
We have not been doing it because, frankly, we don't have the personnel that are interested in coming in on a concert.
I can't, I can't staff somebody there on a consistent basis to help out with the traffic direction.
Now that traffic direction is going to change a little bit in the near future because, as you may have noticed, the traffic lights that were approved.
Well, earlier in the year, they have finally been getting put up by DOT.
So those traffic lights are going to kind of take the place of some of that traffic direction.
Okay. And is that kind of, if we were to do it, do you see it as kind of a break-even as opposed to a revenue generator?
It would be a break-even.
It was a break-even. So more work for you, but break-even for the budget.
Yeah, we can't really charge them for profit.
Okay.
Take your profits.
Thank you.
Okay. Any other questions about the budget?
Do you contemplate more training happening during the year?
Because I see we're already hit a percent of half of the year.
Any specialized training probably will get turned down for the rest of the year because of that.
However, there is mandatory training that we still have to do this fall.
And that consists of our in-service training, which really,
we try to schedule on officers' regular days on so we don't incur overtime from that.
And currently we're using WCTC, which is a pretty good bargain deal for us because they provide a day's worth of training.
I think it's like $35 an officer.
So that really isn't a huge hit to the training budget, but that's,
that training will be necessary for the rest of the year.
Does that number of $35 an officer get attributed to the training budget?
Do you know?
It does. All right.
I got to look to my, my budget person.
Yes. Yes. That's where it goes.
Thank you.
And just again, following up with the percentages.
Question with the maintenance contracts.
So those obviously are on the old facility.
Yes.
And we continue, you know, they stay coming out of your budget even when you're moved into the new place.
We have to look at what the maintenance contracts will be for the new place and,
and work that into the 27 budget.
Okay.
That's good to know.
Okay.
And obviously the vehicle maintenance we can't do much about.
No, we can't. And it's, um, yeah, that's, I mean, that's up there too.
Yeah, that's at 91.
And I've discussed this already with the finance director and essentially we didn't get to new cars this year.
And so our primary cars are that much older and needing that much more maintenance.
And I told him, I don't really expect that that's going to change.
Anytime this year, because they just continue to accumulate miles.
So I anticipate that'll get better next year when we can replace those cars and then have some newer.
Pressure of vehicles in the fleet. So.
Thank you.
Any other questions?
Okay.
Okay.
Hearing none, then we'll move on to municipal court statements.
Calls for service. I'm sorry.
Oh, my bad. Okay. I'm just looking at the flow here.
Yep. Municipal court statements and.
Any questions there?
Hearing none.
Then we can move on to calls for service.
And we have both June and July's calls for service.
Any questions there?
Mr. Chairman, quick question for the chief chief.
I don't mean to put you on the spot. So feel free to answer this when we meet on Friday or whatever.
But wastewater treatment plant calls. What are those?
So ever since I've started wastewater has got somebody in the building 24 7 365.
Dispatch makes a call about every hour after about 10 p.m. till about 6 a.m.
To check on that person to make sure that they're okay.
That's important. Yeah.
So they must be creating some calls for that.
So they're not incidents per se. They're just businesses.
They're basically a well fair check.
And we've done ever since we had our own dispatches. We call every hour to make sure that that person is answering,
not that they've fallen into something or have some other move or some other problem.
So beautiful. Thank you.
Any other questions on calls for service?
Hearing none.
And one last thing is the Wisconsin information based reporting.
And any questions there.
Okay.
Quiet group tonight.
Okay. Hearing none.
Then we can move on to the chief's report.
Okay. So I've got two items, even though only a is on her, but.
For the update for the public safety building.
We continue to move things over there today. I got.
I had our evidence tech team move everything from our evidence room.
As far as collecting the evidence over the new PD. They did a fantastic job.
They got it all done in a couple hours.
They are putting everything away, labeling the new locations for these things.
The only staff who we ran into is, like I said, in that room, there was a lack of shelving in the cupboard.
So I have arranged to get some more shelving brought over to us for that tomorrow.
We'll be bringing it was in today.
They started working on our computers and I identified our priority computers.
Two of which are in the property room.
So that now the property room can be secured.
And we can start getting our evidence over there, our actual.
Taken evidence over there, which myself and one of the property officers will be doing tomorrow morning.
Trying to transfer as much of that as we can.
Phone system for the whole city is up and operational.
The phones that I could plug in that were extra at the new PD have been plugged in.
They are working.
On a side note, I didn't know how this would work, but I was at the new PD.
I dialed the extension for the old PD, one of the phones and somebody answered and I said, Hey, I'm at the new PD and this is actually working.
We can talk back and forth.
It is the little, it's the little victories that mean a lot.
What we're going to be looking at.
Now coming up in the short term is really working on trying to get some of the computers over there and monitors and get no setup.
The plan is to try and get a clerk over at the new location so that we can start operating out of there and then once we can do that.
We can start moving other stuff over officers have already started moving things for their lockers and their personal like their workspace stuff.
Today I got all their entry fobs programmed.
So today they receive their fobs and their keys so they can have access to the building now.
So like I said, we're really going to start trying to move stuff over as much as possible shortly.
They all seem to be pretty excited about it.
The only one big thing that's left to do is we were going to use movers to move some of our stuff, but as we've looked through the list of things that we're going to have the movers do.
We found that a lot of the things are already either there or we don't need to take because they were covered by the things that were purchased with the building.
So we kind of for went that night. I've convinced a group to work for pizza.
And we're going to rent a U hall and get a couple of decent alleys and and all that stuff over ourselves one evening.
So that's kind of where we're at.
Just don't forget to move the PFC's file cabinet over.
Yeah, I got to talk to you guys about that.
Don't forget about that because that you guys still have have to do that. So, yeah.
Is there a date that you hope to have everything transferred over and be in there?
I September 15th.
I hope we're operational out of there. I mean, probably next week, I'm hoping.
But I know I have a month that I just my main concentration is getting everything over there that we need. We can fine tune it later.
But then I know I have a couple weeks to be able to still go back and access things because there are.
I mean, you think about all the stuff you accumulate over 30 years and trying to figure out what can stay and what should go or what we don't need.
Exactly. Yeah. And just one other question I had also involves chief to bore is.
Have you come to an agreement on.
You know, things within the building who's responsible for certain things or have you had the opportunity to talk about that yet.
We talk about it on almost daily basis. Yeah, we've been.
Yeah, we see each other more than I think we probably see our families right now.
Yeah, we've been working through that as things come up. In fact, we just finalized like we're doing the fire alarm system.
They're doing the sprinkler system stuff. So trying to keep it as equitable as possible in areas that makes sense.
We still have some things to work on as far as interior maintenance that kind of stuff, but anything that we can share.
We will work on doing great.
Any other questions on that subject.
Just a comment.
Chief, you've been doing a lot of work on this project and the moving right down to going over and vacuuming.
So thank you.
I even had my wife over there working.
That's about the only way we get to see each other is she's outcome over and help us.
We have a lot of work to do with this project.
So thank you for all of the hard work. Just a fantastic.
Great job. Thank you.
All right, moving along.
Item B is a last minute entry. We have a.
If it's okay, we have a request for secondary employment from Tammy Shepard.
She will be working part time at the Fredonia Police Department.
I think basically doing what she does for us, which is entering records and maybe typing reports and things like that.
I don't believe that this will interfere with her position at all.
It's very part time and the hours basically are whenever she wants to go up there.
Having had the experience of working up in Fredonia.
I know how that place is run.
And essentially, it's when I have some free time, I'll go up and take care of this kind of thing. So.
Okay, good.
Yeah, I see a request dates back to June since we didn't have a July meeting. It's.
On the on the shelf for a while. Yeah.
But if you have no problem with that, I don't see any problem here.
Commissioner, is any comments on that?
Since it's not an item on here, I don't think we can.
Take any action other than getting giving blessing on this.
Correct.
Any problems?
No, okay.
Consider it done then. Thank you.
All good done.
Okay, let's then move on to.
Fire department.
Good evening, everybody.
Good evening, chief.
I figured we would just go through June and then go through July as we do normally.
So yes, we will start with the MSM voices for June.
Any concerns there, chief? Nope.
Aim balances are starting to show signs of their ages, just, you know,
similar to what chief Sarnaki was saying.
Air conditioning and both ambulances went out within a month of each other.
So you'll see an invoice for a runner.
It's fire equipment and doing four 52s and then an invoice in July for four 51.
Other than that,
everything's pretty standard.
As far as fire department invoices go.
Not much to report there.
Host testing is the big ticket item.
We contract with a company called fire cat that comes in and does our annual host testing for us.
It's nice because they have the correct equipment to do host testing.
You know, it's a little bit more complicated than,
you know, at 20 years ago and just hooked it up to the truck and pumped it as hard as we could and made sure nothing broke.
There's an FPA standards that we have to follow.
It also gives us a lot of time back because we're using three or at least three or four trainings a year to do host testing.
And now that company comes in and does it for us. So we get those nights back for training.
Yes, sir.
Just curious, will that be an easier process in the new facility?
Most testing. No, we actually.
Use the Hollander chocolate lot. They're gracious enough to let us use that lot.
So they can lay out 300 feet at a time and test all of those sections so they get through our entire fleet in a day and a half or so.
Yeah, they have been super gracious about doing that the entire time that they've had the building.
We try to schedule it on Monday when they're closed, but even then they more than gracious enough to work around us if we needed to bleed over.
Great. Yeah. Yeah, we did. Send them a nice. Thank you.
Thank you.
You mess calls in June.
It continues to be busy.
140 calls in June.
We actually ended up in with 140 in July as well.
You're seeing that these are all largely our calls. We haven't been doing many intercepts. One or two Z here in there.
But.
We did have three mutual aid requests for second emails calls.
As we'll talk about in our later agenda items, staffing has been a little bit challenging as of late. So that leaves us when we're at minimum unable to staff a second.
So we had a couple of calls where somebody was not available and you'll see those are typically later at nighttime calls.
That said, you know, looking back a few years ago and we're still, you know, farming out 50% of our calls, having essentially nine total throughout the course of the year is a significant improvement, but something that we're trying to work on internally.
And response times are still looking good at a little over six minutes. Yes.
Very good. Thank you.
Tell us about fire calls for June.
June fire calls are kind of all starting to run together in my head a little bit.
I don't think there is anything too exciting there except for a cat from a tree rescue. Yes, it does happen.
I think we have significantly razz the firefighter who got his picture on social media doing it. So.
Yeah, that's.
But otherwise nothing super exciting there.
And then moving into July.
EMS invoices.
Significant things there. Again, we already talked about the air conditioning repair for 451.
Our billing collection numbers were up significantly, which is good because that's a percentage of our reimbursement.
The higher we see the ambulance billing collection fee means we're doing better from that standpoint, and then we have a pre employment physical there for a new member that we'll talk about shortly.
And chief photos, a little more about the ambulances. How old are those and how many miles, when are they going to be replaced?
All of them are due for replacement in 2020.
Well, one is due in 28 and one is due in 29.
If we can get them by them. So that's something that I've been talking with a finance director about.
We're likely going to have to kind of go through a process similar to the ambulances or the engine about lead time issues.
We have been working with a vendor to help put together a spec so we can send it out for proposals from multiple vendors so we can cross all of those things off the list, but.
The ambulance 451 has about 90 between 90 and a hundred thousand miles on it right now.
These are gas motors.
When these two were purchased, they were.
Specked as gas motors, so it's not the old diesel that'll run forever and ever and ever anymore.
And it's not just the chassis, the box shows, you know, age with it. And as we change, you know, operationally, that's the biggest thing.
You know, when these things were built, if you would have told me they would have been staffed by full time firefighter paramedics out of lap data.
But obviously, you know, needing storage for their turn out gear, breathing apparatus, those type of things are going to be included in the new ambulance because that stuff just doesn't fit in the currently out.
So we're also trying to plan for the future as we're working on the designs for these. Hopefully they can be remounted.
Once we get the body style, how we want them with the next iteration of ambulances, hopefully we can get two chassis out of each of them.
So.
Mr Chairman. Yes, sir.
Chief question on the ambulance billing collections. Yes.
If I'm remembering correctly, we approve this as kind of a new process, like in the first quarter of this year.
And I'm just wondering if you could say more about it. You think it's going well. I know we were spending enormous amounts of staff time and it wasn't really efficient and we weren't collecting and.
As far as I, I don't think we made any significant changes to what we're doing.
We had, we did have some meetings with our ambulance billing provider to make sure that some of the issues that we were having are ironed out.
Since that time, I think communication with them has been significantly better.
We have a new customer success representative, I think is their specific title.
Who has been significantly more responsive than our previous, but there's always issues with, you know,
people getting bills for work comp things that, you know, it didn't get entered as work comp.
You know, either on the hospital side or, you know, vice versa. So we always have little things here and there.
You know, and as these billing companies become larger and larger and larger, it's just like any other corporation as they get bigger and bigger or bigger.
Sometimes customer service wins, but when we get those concerns, we take them seriously and we have pretty quick follow up with our rep to make sure those things get.
Corrected pretty quick. Okay. And you're happy with the, I mean, they have a percentage right, but it's.
Yes, if you look at, you know, when we went, you know, when we stayed with ems, emc, ems, emc purchased, Andre's medical billing, who was our previous provider.
And their collection rates, you know, are significantly higher, or at least somewhat higher than, you know, what the national averages or if we went with a smaller firm.
So that's part of the puzzle to, you know, ambulance, EMS billing, medical billing, all of those things involve insurance are and are exceedingly complicated. So it requires them to kind of be persistent.
And that's why, you know, their, their fees are what they are because it takes a lot of time. In fact, I just talked with them on Monday to make sure all of our Medicare and Medicaid stuff was buttoned up because there had been some stuff that fell through the cracks
a couple of years ago that needed to get buttoned up. Okay, so great. Thank you. Yep.
Okay, any other questions about July billing invoices.
Fire invoices pretty low for the month of July probably because we've been spending most of our time getting stuff ready for the transition to the new facility.
You'll see fire alarm inspection and monitoring that kind of goes back to your question before about, you know, working together with the police department. So this is our half of the fire alarm system.
Monitoring work, like I said before, we're taking care of the fire alarm inspection and monitoring, and then they're taking care of the sprinkler system so their invoice is pretty similar to ours.
So we're going to have a couple of calls.
For Peter's little laggy today, too many pages of things to flip through.
Strangely exact same number of calls as June.
A couple more intercepts again, you know, kind of waxing and waning, whether that's, you know, for don't use on a second call or whatever the case is.
Two to three intercepts a month right now, but as they're staffing fluctuates just like anyone else.
You know, those numbers kind of bounce up and down.
Response times in July, drop below six minutes average in the city of five minutes and 37 seconds, which is great.
And no facility based lift assist. We've been doing pretty well with that since the ordinance passage last year.
A couple of mutual aid requests, both of those were 30 minutes calls, or sorry, two, two thirds of those were 30 minutes calls.
And you guys know, don't have a 30 minutes, but both of those calls got first responders going to them. So at least somebody's coming.
Getting to the patient quickly and at least starting care while we're waiting for our friends for almost a central to show up and help us out.
Fire calls. So this is the first month in.
I think our department's history that we hit 50 fire calls in a month.
40 is quite high. We had 41 the month prior and we eclipse that.
Last year we had two months for the first time ever above 40. We've done that like four months already this year.
We are well on our way to 2000 total calls this year, which will be significantly higher than where we've been in the past.
Looks like you responded to four or five mutual aid calls. Yeah, I believe the 12th was one of those strange days.
We had three fires in one day. One of them being our own on terrace drive.
We responded to a fully involved garage fire at one in the morning.
By the time I got on scene.
Flames were already through the roof of the garage and it had partially already collapsed.
Our crews got on scene very quickly and we're able to knock down the fire as best they could and prevent significant damage to the interior of the house.
There was still some smoke damage and those type of things, but the fire didn't spread maybe 10 feet past the firewall in the garage.
Our friends for the police department also did a great job helping get the neighbors evacuated and doing some force of a entry practice to make sure the people next door were out and safe as well as making sure the residents of that home were out.
Then we ended up going to Newberg for a fire at one in the afternoon.
And as we were on our way back from that one, we went to Cedarburg for another fire.
Is that how we got the 347 response time? Yeah.
Wow. Yeah. In fact, I was coming through Cedarburg as that page went out.
So I was there probably faster than some of the Cedarburg units were getting on scene.
Nice.
So, good work.
Okay.
Mr. Has any questions about June or July fire information.
Okay.
Right.
Okay.
So a couple of things to run through quickly.
Question on the revenue.
Did you want to do go through the cheese report or do you want to do the budget next? Oh, okay. It's in there.
It's up to you. I just want to be sure we didn't miss the revenue. I'm just.
I'll get you this. All right. Thank you, sir. Appreciate it. Okay. So just a couple of things from a staffing and personnel perspective.
I'm not sure what it is.
It's just a lot of things that we've been doing.
I'm sure that the National Firefighter Paramedic Brad Walker has resigned and accepted full time employment with the city of Brookfield fire department.
He started there on August 10 we wish him well and good luck.
That means we will be starting a recruiting process to fill that vacancy.
In the short term in the near future. So.
has requested to move back to the rank of engineer.
Engineers are the folks that drive, pump the vehicles
instead of riding in the right front
and kind of being on the line.
Andrew was a engineer for a long time
before becoming a lieutenant
and then has request to move back to that position.
So I will honor that request
unless there's any objection
from the police and fire commission.
Any objections?
Hearing none,
continue on.
Wonderful.
Like to announce the hiring
of a new part-time firefighter, EMT, Isaiah Mullins.
Isaiah has been with us for close to a month or so now,
has been doing well quickly progressing
through his orientation.
Isaiah is a former defensive end
for the Wisconsin Badgers.
So he will not be the hard one to pick out
when you see him on a call.
All right, Commissioner Dean, now's your chance.
Let's go through the budget.
So I've provided the quarter two budget in our packet
for you guys to review.
Just kind of going through,
you'll see our EMS revenue is up a little bit
beyond what we expected.
We forecasted about 800,000
and we're at 430,000 so far this year.
And as our call volume continues to increase,
I would anticipate that continuing to increase.
That does not include our GMAT funding
or there's a program through the state
that essentially helps offset some of the cost
of what we're losing when we bill Medicare
or sorry, Medicaid patients.
So that adds between 12 and $15,000 annually,
sometimes a little bit more, sometimes a little bit less.
But that's a program that started technically last year
but it was retroactive to the year prior.
Amanda, our administrative assistant,
does a great job doing that for us.
It takes a lot of work for her to go through
and catalog all those calls and all of that revenue
and put that into the state portal to collect that.
As I'm sure you can imagine that portal
is way more complex than it probably needs to be,
but she does a great job taking care of that for us.
So that'll be miscellaneous revenue
when that's received as well.
Expenditures, as you can see,
we're kind of creeping up on our overtime as well.
We're at 53%.
But see the previous comments before about staffing issues
with the departure of three full-time personnel this year.
We've had to post a fair bit of overtime
to make sure we're at least at our staffing minimums.
We always do try to fulfill those positions
with part-time personnel,
but those folks obviously only have so much time available
to give and the ones that are working there,
maximum hours can't really help us more than they are.
So typically a lot of those just fall
on full-time staff to pick up.
One thing that I would like to note in here,
both on the fire and the EMS side
is the life insurance is significantly higher
than what is budgeted.
I did talk to the finance director about this.
This was an oversight on their part this year
about forecasting for life insurance
and not including full-time personnel into that.
So that'll be corrected in the 2027 budget.
But a lot of those, that's in kind of the section
that's maintained by City Hall
and not really touched by us.
The rest of the GLs seem to be going okay,
computer services, that one, you know,
when you see it, it says 419% over.
That's only because that line item closed this year
and got rolled into something else,
but that was a carryover bill from 2025
that made its way into this year.
So there's nothing to be concerned about
from that standpoint.
And as you can see, our software fees in the line item
below is only at 13% which will cover that significantly.
Otherwise, if anybody has any questions,
I'm more than happy to take them, you know,
similar sentiments about our vehicle maintenance costs
are, you know, as we continue to age our fleet,
those fees keep going up.
And we're trying to stay ahead of that as best as we can.
So we're still trying to do some preventative
maintenance things, replacing tires,
doing those type of things as budget allows,
but we're trying not to get behind on those things
because that's where we see these, you know,
astronomically priced repairs
because we've neglected the preventative maintenance things.
Sure, you have a question.
Just a quick one.
When is the insurance tax from the state?
When do we recognize that revenue or receive it?
Oh, the GMAT stuff.
Usually we get it probably should be relatively soon.
I would say end of quarter two, early quarter three.
Okay, 80,000.
Oh, no, it's significantly less than that.
It's probably, like I said, between 15 and 20,000.
Maybe we're talking about a different thing
than it's forecasted at 80.
Are you talking about the EMS call billing?
I'm talking about fire insurance that from
Oh, that's the 2% dues.
That should be here by now.
Yeah.
So I don't, that should be here.
It'll show up next time.
Yes, that likely will.
Yeah, we received, we did our 2% dues audit.
I think we talked about that a few meetings ago.
So just waiting for that to post,
but that should have been here by now.
So I will follow up with the finance.
And that's a pretty clear line.
You forecast 80 and you get it.
Yeah, it's pretty, yeah.
I mean, it's within a thousand bucks or two.
Okay, thank you.
But that'll be there for sure.
Good.
Any other budget questions?
Carry on.
Okay.
Update on the brush truck
and the progress of the new engine.
So we have finally placed the new brush truck
457 into service after Monday nights
training with our driver operators.
It's replacing the 1992 GMC brush truck
as our primary brushing kind of quick attack vehicle.
It actually does a lot more things
than the previous brush truck did.
It's equipped with a significantly more powerful pump.
The previous brush truck had, I believe,
a seven and a half or a five horsepower motor.
The new one has a 35 horsepower motor on it.
And the reason that we did that is it will allow us
to essentially pump a standard firefighting
hand line for areas, especially in the town
along those residential roads by the lake
that you really can't get a fire truck down.
So at least we can get down there
and use real firefighting equipment
to try to get a knockdown if we have something down there.
It also is something that we would utilize
on the interstate for car accidents
if we need a hose line or something like that
because it's equipped with foam.
It's got a 225 gallon water tank,
which can be fed from our tanker truck.
There's twin hose reels off the side as well.
This brush truck has breathing apparatus.
Again, if we're gonna do interior structural firefighting
whether we need those type of things.
So it's a significantly more advanced vehicle
than its predecessor.
We are about $40,000 between 30 and $40,000
on your budget on this project largely
because we kind of construction managed this vehicle
in house.
In fact, Cedar Grove fire department was down here
last week to take a look at ours.
They had a bid out for something similar
maybe with a few different bells and whistles on it.
They were getting quotes back for about 250,000.
Ours will be done for about 135 to 140.
Good work.
On top of that, we also got a $10,000 grant from the DNR
to partially fund some of the equipment on the vehicle.
Like I said, a lot of that comes back
to our in-station personnel putting in a lot of work.
Deputy Chief Betcher installing all the lighting
so the crews throughout the day
helping them get those type of things done.
We've been putting the lift kits on
and making sure the tires get on
and doing all that kind of stuff.
So a lot of thanks goes out to those guys
and we're getting all of that stuff done in house
to save us on budget side.
Progress report on the engine.
I don't really have a lot of great news to report.
We were initially planning on September 23rd
as a delivery date.
I received a message from Reliant Fire Apparatus
that that will likely be pushed back
until the end of October.
Nothing on our end that we could do about that
or caused by us, just production delays
and manufacturer delays
and them having issues sourcing materials.
It sounds like there is a chance
that we could still get it in September
but they just wanted to prepare us for that.
I know they are working on it.
I did get graphics proofs sent to me last week
which we sent them back for revision
but it will be here before the end of the year
come Heller High Water is what I'm told.
And we've been working on trying to spec
and order all of the other things that go on at the hose
and all of that kind of stuff.
So when it gets here, hopefully the turnaround time
to get it in service is pretty quick
and we don't drag this project over
into the next budget year unless we have to.
If just a question about how you're disposing
of the old two old trucks,
have you given any thought how you're going to do that?
Yes, the brush truck will go on Wisconsin surplus
and probably the next couple of weeks,
obviously with a move to the new building,
we've kind of trying to prioritize
getting operational out of that place.
But as soon as we are moved over there,
we will be putting that vehicle on Wisconsin surplus.
We've actually reached out to them
to see if that truck is worth more with the skid in it.
So the fire pump in it or if we lift that out
and sell that separately,
if we will get more for the truck that way
because it's a 1992, like 3500 GMC
without a ton of miles on it,
those things actually collect a.
It's a cream trophy.
Yeah, they collect a pretty good value on that.
So sometimes when the firefighting equipment is left
in it, it actually decreases the value in that.
So we've reached out to them to try to see
which option is better because taking the skid out
is a couple hours and a forklift.
So we should be able to handle that.
As far as the engine, we've listed it,
we've listed 464, which is the engine that it's replacing
on a couple of different fire truck broker sites.
We've had a couple of nibbles, I guess,
but no serious takers.
So if we do not have a serious buyer by the time
the new one is set to arrive,
we will also put 464 on Wisconsin surplus.
Okay, thank you.
Yes, any other questions about those?
Yes, sir.
Chief, as we approach near final budget time with the city
and I know we're gonna be reviewing that with you
and previewing it for the council.
It would be really helpful.
You get a humble team over there,
but it would be really helpful if you had a side column
or notes for us or whatever.
For example, coming in under budget on the fire truck,
a little bit of work that you guys did there
to be sure we came in under budget.
You've had some creative revenue proposals this year,
whether they were approved or not.
Could we include all that?
So it's more than a footnote on the budget.
Absolutely, yeah.
Yeah, I think as we continue to try to push for resources
yes, absolutely, I do owe you guys a meeting
about the budget here in the next couple of weeks.
Yeah, no worries.
No worries, we'll add and I will get to you.
But I think that should be a part of our presentation.
Yeah, I agree, 100%.
Thank you.
Lastly on my list is just a quick update
on the public safety building.
Largely echo, Chief Serneki on this.
It's been a fun couple of weeks as we're trying to kind
of get sorted out and sort through the things
that we didn't anticipate a finding.
Honestly, there hasn't been a ton of them on our side.
It's just making sure that things are functioning,
outlets all work and the garage doors aren't causing us
problems and those type of things.
So the plan is to be operational in there
late Monday night, early Tuesday morning.
We'll use this month's fire training for the vehicles
coming over and everybody's turn out gear
coming over that night.
Our last big hold up was building access.
We had permissions and instructions
on how to do that today.
So we couldn't do that because our staff getting
in the building is kind of a barrier to us
working in that building.
Which you used to making force countries?
Yes, it turns out we're not very gentle and it costs a lot
and I don't think we have a force entry
repair line item in the budget.
No, no, okay.
I'm checking.
So, you know, I think we're excited to make the move.
Again, you know, similar to Chief Sarnaki,
we had budgeted in the project having movers come
and do a lot of the work.
But our crews, especially during the day have been,
hey, what can we do to help?
What can we do to help?
And doing 90% of the work to the point
where I don't think we will be hiring movers either.
Yesterday, I, you know, walked out on the apparatus floor.
The dining room table from the current station is there.
The gear dryer and the tool bench is all there,
which are exceedingly heavy.
So I don't know what magic they did
to get them out of the station.
Nor do I probably want to know what they did
to get them out of the station.
But so that is a significant expense.
Again, you know, thanks to our staff coming in,
you know, either off shift or giving up their free time
to just help with these things to make the move
both cost effective and smooth for us.
So IT was there today to start getting our computers
up and running.
It's been a pretty big lift for us.
You know, we're coming from a place where, you know,
we are using a router that once existed in my college dorm
for our internet to having multiple IT closets
and, you know, more computers than probably both
of our current facilities combined, which are needed.
You know, it's 2026 and our current facility, you know,
was built in 1968 or 69.
And not a lot of it has changed in there,
but it's a lot of work getting that infrastructure
up and running today.
In fact, I just was messaging one of the guys
who's working on building an internal television network
for us.
So all of our screens will have up to the minute CADs,
security cameras, our response information,
all of that stuff, just run through the TV
so you can, it's just like a channel.
So again, but also doing that on his own time,
building it for us right now.
So I can't say enough to all the guys that are over there.
One last thing I wanted to mention about that
is the decommissioning process.
Last week at the GGF, they approved a contract
with Bickler Auction Services who will be doing
a decommissioning auction at both of our sites
the third week of September.
Essentially everything that's not bolted down
and not moved over by then is up for auction.
All the things will be posted online,
then people can go on and bid on them
and then come pick them up.
I think it's the Friday and Saturday of that week.
I think we both agreed that this is the most effective option
for us instead of trying to go and individually list
everything on Wisconsin surplus.
Like imagine listing every office chair and desk
and all that kind of stuff.
And if you've ever listed anything on Wisconsin surplus,
you'll get 40 emails about an office chair
and somebody wants to come see it and sit in it
and do both handles work.
There's just one handle work.
Like can you take four more pictures of it?
Neither of us have the time to do that.
So having a third party come in and do that for us
is a great way for us to still get revenue
from the things that are in the building
but also protect our time and our staff's time
in order to get out of there.
So, bickler auction services.
They are local BICHLER.
They're out of Fredonia and they,
or sorry, out of Belgium.
They're probably gonna come after me if they hear that.
They're out of Belgium and they contract
with a larger auction house that helps them list
and all that kind of stuff.
Is there a contemplated date for us, you mentioned?
It is the third week of September.
I have to look at the contract again for the exact dates.
Okay, thank you.
Yep.
That's all I got.
Here's a question for both chiefs.
He had residents ask about open houses of the new facility.
I can answer that one.
Yes, so October 11th will be our open house.
Time will be posted shortly.
We will be doing a ribbon cutting or a hose on coupling
which is way cooler than a ribbon cutting.
And then open house for both fire and police, correct?
Yes.
So, we've got a lot of cool stuff planned already.
The sprinkler trailer from the National Fire Protection
Sprinkler Association will be here.
The Coast Guard will be bringing one of their boats
on a trailer, obviously.
The Sheriff's Department is going to bring some stuff
from emergency management and likely the SRT folks.
And we have been in conversations with the International Guard
and they seem supportive of actually bringing and landing
a Black Hawk helicopter.
We'll mark my calendar for October 11th.
Anything else, chief?
I'll get a question.
I have a couple, thanks.
So, I know we were, there was,
we lost significant amount of storage due to the HVAC equipment
and a little bit in the, or another significant amount
in the vehicle repair area.
How are you doing on storage as you get closer to moving?
We're working on it.
Working on it?
We're working on it.
Yeah, it's gonna be tight, but we're working on it.
Okay.
And then how did the training,
I noticed the National Guard helicopters,
we had two trainings, right?
One on North Beach and one on at Coldide Park.
How did that go?
Yes, so they were supposed to be within the same month,
but unfortunately we had to reindate the one
on in Upper Lake Park.
Both of them went well.
The first training was essentially a kind of dry run,
getting to work with the helicopter crews,
kind of learning their expectations of things,
approaching the helicopter, those type of things.
The second one, we actually did some victim picks
off of the bluff,
both with our bluff rescue team,
coupled with their crews from the Black Hawk.
So they would drop somebody down from the Black Hawk,
we would package them,
and then they would hoist either one of their guardsmen
or rescue Randy our training victim.
So then they would land the Black Hawk in the park,
and then they would offload them
to our waiting ambulance crews,
and then we had a EMS scenario set up
in the back of the ambulances.
Things went pretty well.
We pruned a few trees.
We did not anticipate the amount of downdraft
from those helicopters,
it's significantly more than the old fish day helicopters.
So quick apology to John Crane,
but we pruned a few trees a little early for them,
but we talked to him that night,
and they were fine with it, so.
But also again, thanks to the police department
for coming and helping us shut down the park,
and that was super helpful,
because that meant more of our people
could actually participate in the training.
Cool, thank you.
Yep.
Okay, any other questions this evening?
So looking at my calendar,
it looks like September 14th,
Monday, September 14th is our next meeting.
Back to our schedule.
And the last item on our agenda
is a motion to convene in closed session,
pursuant to Wisconsin statute 1985 1C
for the purpose of considering employment, promotion,
compensation, or performance evaluation data
of a public employee over which this
police and fire commission has jurisdiction
or exercises responsibility,
to which review job applications received
to date for the position of full-time police chief.
It's a voice, vote, Ed.
One, so moved.
Oh, sorry.
Second.
And a voice, vote.
Aye.
Aye.
Aye.
Aye.
Okay, we're in closed session.