##VIDEO ID:0DLr7jE739Q## e e e e e [Music] [Music] [Music] good afternoon everybody this is uh the finance committee meeting for a January 28th uh please note this meeting is being recorded it will be available shortly Hereafter for scheduled an OnDemand viewing on any smartphone or tablet device if anyone is recording this meeting please notify the chairman I see none pursuant to Governor Healey's March 29th 2023 signing of the acts of 2023 extending certain co9 measures adopted during the state of emergency suspending certain provisions of the open meeting law general laws chapter 3A paragraph 20 until March 31 2025 this meeting of the chadam finance committee is being conducted in person and via remote participation every effort will be made to ensure that the public can adequately access ass the proceedings as provided for in the order a reminder that persons who would like to listen to this meeting while in progress might may do so by calling the phone number area code one pardon me one area code 58945 4410 the conference ID is 48755 531 pound sign or join join the meeting online via Microsoft teams through the link in the posted agenda well this is a live broadcast and simal cast on chatam TV Xfinity channel 1072 despite our best efforts we may not be able to provide real-time access we will post a record of this meeting on the town's website as soon as possible my name is Andy young and vice chairman of the finance committee I'm standing in for stepen Daniel right now uh he may be joining us on line with comments but I'll be U running the meeting okay let's start with roll call uh Tommy Don here Robert Madison here John papalardo Joan spra here Andy young is here Kristen Andress here Tracy Shields here Eric Whitley here and Stephen I see has now joined us online thank you very much all right um let's commence with the agenda uh Carrie you want to take over for a little thank you sure um we're going to be going over the FY 2026 operating and uh capital budget for Public Safety the public safety operating budget is at is presented at 9,259 517 for FY 2026 an increase inrease of $649,950 m981 1840 the animal control division has an operating budget of $83,400 the fire division budget has totals 5,717 something7 the fire dispatch Services assessment for FY 2026 is $ 61,2 188 Emergency Management division is uh presented at $ 54,1 33 Capen Islands EMS division is $6,500 the oil Pollution Control is at $500 uh the 5-year Capital plan um the police division has a few requests 40,000 for firearms replacement with mounted Optics 40,000 for a four-wheel UTV and trailer and 140,000 for annual police cruisers the fire division requests are 50,000 for protective clothing 10,000 for mobile and portable radios and 35,000 for self-contained breathing apparatus the Emergency Management requests are $40,000 for generators and there is um a warrant article request for the fire department for 410,000 for a new ambulance and the police chief and fire chief are here to do their presentations thank you car you're welcome thank you Carrie uh I'm not sure if the Chiefs uh done rock paper scissors who's who's gone first all right fire chief Justin Tano please take the stand all right good afternoon everybody wonderful to see you all and thanks for having me uh the fire department is proposing a 5,717 se7 operating budget for FY 26 uh which is a 6.2% increase over the FY 25 operating budget most of the budget increases for FY 26 are related to Personnel expenses these increases on the Personnel side of the budget are Prim primary contract primarily contractual totaling 4,722 2817 the increases to the expense side of the budget are mostly either inflationary or due to increases in service contracts and fees and this accounts for $369,500 maintenance line item which is increasing by 10% and the fire department is not seeking any new positions in FY 26 calendar year 2024 was a near Mirror Image to calendar year 23 which happened to be a record year for the fire department in terms of our total incident responses and total ambulance transports I'm incredibly grateful for a passionate dedicated motivated staff who always go the extra mile for chadam I'd also like to thank the select board the finance committee the town manager the finance director and the taxpayers for providing the necessary funding which allows our First Responders to perform their duties safely and efficiently through select board approval in November we are in the process of finalizing the language of a memorandum agreement with the barnville county sheriff's office which will transition fire and emergency medical dispatching services to the Regional emergency communications center the transition is expected to take effect on March 3rd of this year as initially proposed the assessment formula had not been finalized and therefore did not include any state funding during my November presentation to the select board the assessment was approximately $100,000 since then the FY 26 assessments have been finalized and chadam assessment is 61,2 [Music] 188 uh that assessment is based on a uh per capita calculation which comes out to $929 per capita and it's based off the 2020 census numbers the Emergency Management budget request contains a minor increase uh in salary providing for a 3% increase to the deputy director's pos position salary otherwise this budget is level funded the operating supplies line account in the Emergency Management budget accounts for majority the expense side of the budget uh these funds are utilized for a variety of operational expenditures throughout the year and will also be utilized to support our regional C team which is uh Regional with Brewster Orleans chadam and Harwich the C team is a volunteer organization which has been largely Grant funded each Town represented by c will once again be asked to earmark up to $2,500 towards operating supplies uh which will be funded out of the Emergency Management operating budget Mr chair excuse me may I interrupt for just a moment do uh Chief do you have slides to go along with this presentation Yep this is just my opener I'm going to get in my presentation now oh thank you thank you very uh so with that we'll get uh into our presentation I know you folks always like to see some uh some incident data to start out with so I'm going to go through some of that information from the last calendar year um and then we'll we'll walk through the the different line items and take a look at the cleargov digital budget book um so you guys can see how the the budgets represented there so the first slide just looks at some incident data um over the last 10 year period from calendar year 2015 to 2024 um up until December 1st of 2024 we were well uh on Pace to surpass last year's numbers um fortunately due to a a slower than usual December it was actually our slowest December in about 12 years um the numbers trailed off a little bit so we ended up like I said like I mentioned um almost a near mirror image from last year as far as total incidents we were 15 off from last year this takes a look at ambulance transports from uh from the last 10 calendar years and uh similar numbers there again we were on Pace to to uh surpassed last year's numbers and ended up just slightly below um but you can see um as we discussed last year um the trend has has consistently been up uh really for the last five years um the only outliers we see in N 2019 2020 um we see the 2020 drop due to covid uh when people were staying home uh and then those numbers have have steadily increased since then this takes a look at uh ambulance Revenue um this uses fiscal years instead of calendar years again a 10-year look back um fy21 we see a dip there because of again the covid numbers were down uh ambulance transports were down so the revenue obviously is is tied to the number of transports we do but you can see we've we've significantly gone up over the last few years um so as recently as um fy18 fy19 we were bringing in uh about 600 between 626,000 and 646000 and uh FY 24 we brought in just under 900,000 Mr chair yes TR um can you describe to us where the ambulance uh money comes from in other words how does that get to you from the original patient sure yep um so about 90% of our uh ambulance receipts are are reimbursed through Medicare um obviously we have an older population in town many of the residents are on Medicare and Medicaid uh so many of the reimbursements are are from um Medicare and Medicaid um a good outside of that another about 8% is from private insurance and then there's a small percentage which is 100% self-pay uh we use a third party billing company uh the vendor uh Coastal Medical Billing they do our billing services for us uh for a monthly uh assessment and we pay them uh 4% um for every dollar brought in so we pay them four cents for every dollar in Revenue that we receive so at the end of each month they give us a check um which gets turned into into the general fund thank you the the pie chart here just looks at a breakdown of our types of calls um as we know uh this is It's a pretty normal looking pie chart for us nothing out of the ordinary uh the largest percentage of our calls which uh almost always falls in between about 62 and 66% is our ambulance calls our emergency medical service calls which is the the gray portion of the pie chart um outside of that nothing really uh drastic drastically has changed over the years um we see the the larger blue around uh the 9:00 portion of the pie chart is for service call um that could be anything from uh water leaks um gas leaks things of that nature and then the green and the darker blue um those are all everything from about 9 9:00 to 12:00 are those those are all engine type responses so it could be any type of Hazard from an electrical emergency a gas emergency um like I mentioned things like water leaks um and other types of rescue situations um deployment of the technical rescue team to go look for missing persons um or things uh technical type rescues that don't a little bit outside of the normal Realm of the services provided by a normal firefighter we have members on a technical rescue team that have some specialized skills so that's kind of what you see in the rest of the chart um and then false alarm and false calls that's the the the darker blue portion from about 10 to 12:00 um and and you know false alarms and false calls that's when you know somebody's home alarm system has gone off uh commercial alarm system has gone off we still respond as though it might be a fire when we get there we don't know until we get there what it's going to be um so that that that's a sign significant percentage of calls um about 16% of calls um and you know often times we get there it's a false call false alarm um but that's uh that's just kind of a a n the nature of the Beast chief chief if if I may um in the false alarm and false call do you keep track of shall I say repeat incidents same address um we historically we used to um well over a decade ago um we used to actually have a system where if we responded to a house for you know a certain number of times in a year and they were all false alarms we would start to actually uh build them um per call and and it really was wasn't a great great Public Service um what we noticed is that those people that maybe were having nuisance alarms or the the location of their smoke detector in proximity to the kitchen where it it might tend to go off more frequently than others when we'd respond to those people to their homes to check um as to what the emergency might be we found that in order to evade that expense they would just start taking their smoke detectors down or taking the batteries out of the detectors so it made their home less safe yeah I understand thank you go ahead Barbara um Chief back to the ambulance revenue for just a quick second has the pricing on that gone up at all we haven't changed our our rates in a in uh well over 10 years um like I said most of our our receipts are for Medicare and Medicaid um and that that reimbursement rate is set by the federal government um so they're they're we it wouldn't it wouldn't greatly benefit us in terms of Revenue to to adjust our rates too much um because that that value is set by the by the government anyway okay thanks uh just going to take a quick uh quick look at the at the at the department personnel um nothing's changed since last year uh we have a chief and a deputy chief in administration um day positions include an EMS captain and a fire inspector um those two positions are also cross trained as uh firefighters and uh the fire inspectors an EMT and the EMS captains a paramedic we have uh four shifts of seven Personnel each so each shift has a captain and a lieutenant and five firefighters underneath them um of our four captains we have three paramedics and one EMT of our four lieutenants we have one paramedic and three EMTs and we have uh of our of our 20 firefighter positions 14 are paramedics and six are EMTs and we also have a part-time Administrative Assistant Mr chair yes please uh a chief can you tell us the difference the main difference between a paramedic and an M EMT yep so a paramedic has more advanced training um in in layman's terms it's almost the difference between a nurse and a doctor um so they have Advanced Training it's about double the amount of school um the paramedics are the ones that are starting the IVs reading the EKGs delivering medications and the EMTs are trained to provide basic life Services um so that would be um supporting basic injuries broken bones um lacerations um wounds wounds like that and then they're trained to also assist as the paramedics assistant okay thank you quick look at our fire department Fleet we have two engines a mini pumper our Quint which is our ladder truck and Quint means that it has both a fire pump on it with hose and it's also a ladder truck so it's a combination of basically a combination of a ladder truck and a and a fire pumper we have three ambulances uh our high water vehicle is that the Army Surplus truck you've seen probably driving around we've we've used that um quite a bit over the years with all the the flooding that we've seen on moris island um that's our evacuation vehicle that that can get out to folks um through high water to to get them to safety we have four administrative staff vehicles um two of them are take home myself and the deputy chief have take-home vehicles uh the fire inspector has a vehicle and we have one additional vehicle for staff it's shared between the EMS Captain and the on duty staff and that vehicle is often uh utilized for going to um off-site training meetings um and doing other uh events around town for the mems captain as he meets with other departments our service vehicle is our pickup truck uh that's used to to tow the various trailers we have uh including our boat in our which is uh trailered and housed at the fire station and we have a UTV which is uh basically an allterrain four-wheeler I just wanted to highlight some of the grants that we've received um particularly in the in the past year but also over the last few years um um I've also I've included in the slide some uh some emergency emergency uh management grants as well so um forgive me as I'll come back to these when we do the Emergency Management portion of the budget as well um but for our Emergency Management planning Grant um it's a Citizens core program um we receed just under $20,000 and that's to support our assert team and provide equipment and personal protective equipment for members of the cert team uh small Grant just under $1,500 um it's for money left over from uh when Medicenter 5 used to exist um Cape Cod Foundation manages these grants uh that that money was used to purchase mass casualty incident uh patient triage equipment another Emergency Management planning Grant of $2,700 that's an annual Grant we apply for um which is capped to $2700 it's based on the the uh population we used that money uh this past last year um for the purchase of gas meters for our fire trucks the Massachusetts Department of fire Services uh equipment Grant uh each of the past four years we've received between 13,000 and 15,000 uh this year we received just under $113,000 and that um money is going to be used to purchase calibration equipment for the gas meters um the additional gas meters that we couldn't fund with the other Grant um and some other um firefighting equipment uh PPE Mr chair please go ahead uh explain the the the gas meter yep so that's to uh it it detects a number of different gases uh carbon monoxide oxygen levels hydrogen cyanide levels hydrogen sulfide levels and explosive gases what is it look like where is you do you carry it and what is it they're carried on the fire engines um they're about this big about 3 in x 5 in or so um the firefighters clip them onto their gear um so if we get a call for a carbon monoxide incident somebody's detector going off um where or when somebody smells gas in their home that goes in with them and they can detect dangerous levels of of gases okay thank you thank you Mr Cher right thank you Chief U following up on something else though grants all of a sudden grants particularly federal grants are back in the newspaper headlines um are you is this budget depending in any way on receiving some federal grants no this is all just um this is all supplemental um equipment we we would function fine without um and this these grants wouldn't necessarily offset the budget request um but they just would they're going to supplement the budget have these have these grants been um locked in already spent um majority of the ones you're looking at here um have been locked in and are in the process of being spent okay um the last one um on this slide is the assistance to Firefighters Grant that's a FEMA Grant um we haven't started using that Grant yet um we have been awarded it and we've accepted the award it's for just under $555,000 and that's for it's a paramedic training Grant which we applied for um and what that does is it allows us to send an existing EMT from the Department who we're familiar with and we vetted as a good candidate to become a paramedic um to be able to send them to paramedic school um to cover the expenses that would that are associated with covering their shifts when they're on duty uh to provide for them overtime uh compensation when they're off duting and attending class and their Hospital time and any course fees um associated with attending the class as well are are are you anticipating expending for that before you receive the grant or are you going to wait till the money shows up so the the tricky thing with that Grant is we we weren't notified until the end of July early August that we received the Grant and at that point the uh the class the paramedic class for this year was already full um so we'll start using that in the fall we'll start using those funds in the fall of next year we have somebody in the department we've identified to go to the class um who just submitted her application to attend right knock on wood by any with any luck by next fall we'll have a little more clarity on things like FEMA grants M yep where they're actually going to come through thank you um those those FEMA funds have already been earmarked um so they shouldn't be impacted by any changes in any federal funding they shouldn't be there's there's obviously no guarantee but we've all we've already been guaranteed that that funding right okay thank you Barbara um Chief does that cover only one person one person to attend class yep wow okay thanks yep and and like I said the course fees that are uh you if they have to pay tuition to go to the course it's about a $155,000 fee um what we're we're hopeful that the um the recent change with Cape Cod Community College um with the free education the free tuition will come into play and then we'll have some additional flexibility uh with that Grant but at the time when we applied for it um that that change hadn't happened with for with for c's with the free tuition so we had applied for it as though we were going to have to pay the course fee thanks all right Chief proceed uh prior years I just listed some of the other uh prior year FEMA assistance to Firefighters grants um I mentioned most of these last year we received radio repeater equipment um that just boosts our signal and our radios and helps us communicate in trouble areas um our CPR devices when somebody requires CPR it's a mechanical CPR device that uh attaches to the patient and does CH chest compressions for us uh we have four of those devices one on each ambulance and and an a spare that stays at the station uh $50,000 we received a few years ago for training mannequins um which are stay in our training room at the station uh they're very lifelike we can attach computers to it change its uh conditions we can deliver medications to it and um and really make a lifelike training scenario with it our our power loads for our stretcher um that allows the equ the stretcher and the patient on it to be loaded automatically with a push of a button into the back of the ambulance um so we're not putting as much strain on the on our personnel with lifting um and then another Emergency Management planning Grant we received two years ago for $5,000 and a radio Grant we received from the state uh four years ago for $48,000 all right so now we'll get into FY 26 operating budget so this is what you'll see in clear as I mentioned in my opener uh most of the increases that we see are on the Personnel side of the budget um I know it can be difficult to see um but I'll I'll walk you through here a little bit the um we're all familiar um I met with you folks um I I know everybody's familiar with the contract changes that we had last year um to help um recruit and retain quality staff um it's it's been working out great um last last year's operating budget was already um set prior to the contract being signed and implemented um so we see some adjustments here um in some of our accounts for um some of our line items that are that are uh connected to salary so the salary adjustments were made um we had to make some adjustments to overtime and training um the training line items in our special teams account um because those those are commensurate with the salary increases um so you see some some higher percentages there but it's a it's it's it it accounts for this year's increase but also a correction from last year that wasn't able to be made um because that the budget had already been approved aside from that uh the total regular wages you see we uh we're we're seeing a 99.3% increase this year and uh as mentioned most of that is is due to the the um newly implemented contract um along with um our firefight who are at lower steps as they see step increases throughout the year um actually this is a question for Carrie in Prior years um before we got this new budget book we used to get um year-to-date information for the current year up at least through December which we had asked if it were possible to include last year I'm guessing that it isn't it was in the um in last week's presentation package was a year-to-date expenditure in the back of that but I can reprint it again but it is in the back of the last packet that you got at the last meeting oh well don't reprint it I'll find it okay all right let me know if you don't find it but it is in there and Eric I have your book I just I'm sorry you're welcome thanks Carrie yep uh so moving down our our longevity um that's that's a contractual obligation it's gone up a small percentage um as our as our older staff that still receives longevity payments um as they gain years of service um that number goes up slightly each year holiday pay is tied to salary and wages um so we see a a a percentage increase there um roughly equal to to what the um was agreed upon contractually and then moving down um one of the things that we did was we took um the EMT and paramedic incentive it was a stien for for maintaining those certifications and we moved that into their base pay so if you compare last year's uh line item for the EMT paramedic incentive to this years you'll see that it dropped significantly it's because that that value shifted into their into the base pay special teams I mentioned um our special teams it's it's a it's a training um account for our special teams our special teams include um our members that are on the Barnesville County Technical Rescue Team um members that are on the on the county dive team members that are on our our internal uh water rescue team um we have one member who's on the regional SWAT team a paramedic on the SWAT team and we have a a drone team as well internally um so that funds uh the training at the overtime associated with the training for all those Personnel CH Mr chair uh on your SWAT team to is that combined with the police uh representative to the SWAT team do they do the same sort of respond to the same sort of incidents together or is that separate yep it's it's a regional team it's a it's a county team um or maybe not County it's actually cap and Islands so not not technically County but yeah so uh it's it's it's a law enforcement team um but fire department paramedics from around the region um perform as paramedics uh to support the team and when when would you it would it be considered the SWAT team required versus another I'm gonna I'm going to let uh Deputy Malone answer that when when he gets up because okay like I said we we we have a member of the department who's a paramedic who supports the team um but we don't from the fire department uh perspective we don't activate the SWAT team that's that's a a law enforcement function okay we just support it good afternoon the SW squat team is used for high-risk arrest warrants um help to uh supplement Department's detective units any kind of high-risk uh Mission they're on or getting called out for um active shooter situations barricaded situations so we're always or the team is always uh deployed to assist or take over a situation that is outside of Patrol and how many representatives from the police department on your SWAT team so it's a regional SWAT team um chadam doesn't have anybody on the team right now we're hoping to put someone back on I did 15 years on the team and I just came off last year and a half two years when I was promoted and uh how often is that deployed is it the last few years how many times a year the SWAT team trains twice a month 16 hours a month and they could be deployed once a week for a month or they could be not deployed for three months it's really dependent on what's Happening all right thank you so much thank you Deputy uh that's that's about it for for salary and wages um we can see our total Personnel expenses um overall um year toe we're seeing just under a 10% increase uh and as I mentioned it's pretty much all uh related to our contractual obligations Mr I'm sorry go ahead um Chief you mentioned earlier the transition to the dispatch and you're maybe you're going to get into that and you can you tell me to hold on that but is there um a decrease in the you know the labor costs on the other side of that from from that or no not necessarily um what what we looked at with uh with with um utilizing that shared County resource with dispatching was it it has a resulting impact basically of putting um four trained firefighters on the floor and Deployable out into the field um we didn't there was no Associated cost savings with it um we look at our call volume and what our needs are and how to best utilize our services and for the value of of that dispatching shared resource um it just it made a lot of sense while this opportunity is open now um to to capitalize on it um so there's no there's not necessarily any cost savings with it um we're it's it's really designed to just improve service so in the in the past if I'm understanding what you said you have four firefighters on one was acting as a as a dispatcher and if if everybody went out did the dispatcher at that time leave the station or or they stayed behind no as we currently operate up until March 3rd um that whoever is assigned to dispatch stays at dispatch um so they're not they're not able to to respond on calls once we make that transition and that'll be one extra body that can extra body so so you're really increasing the number of number of firefighters going to any particular response corre if it's if the if everybody goes yep okay understood thank you and then on the on the expense side of the budget um as I mentioned um pretty much everything's level funded except for our vehicle and equipment maintenance account um which we're requesting an additional 10% for um with a couple years under my belt really tried to to to drill into the budget buget um and look and not just um make requests based on prior year budgeting but also look back three and five years of what actual um expenditures were um and feel comfortable with many of those line items on level funding them um aside from our vehicle and equipment maintenance budget um our our vehicles and apparatus are starting to get older um it seems like yesterday that we purchased the Quint um but it is a 2015 truck um the two engines that we purchased the same year are 2017s so you know with with age and depreciation um maintenance and repair costs start to go up a little bit um so we're looking at we've we've looked at what was spent last year the Year prior and what we've spent this year um and feel it's important to increase that that line item by by 10% to make sure that we can we can uh keep keep all our equipment in service and that's that's the only increase I'm I'm requesting on our expense side of the budget um our Capital outlay account um we decreased significantly um that was kind of a a legacy line item it had been in the budget for quite a while um it was it's a little bit of a reserve there um we like to have some money available for emergency repairs um because we're working with emergency vehicles um and we can't predict all expenses the repairs of those Vehicles can get quite costly so we like to have a little bit of uh funding available um in case that there's there's an unexpected expense um but we did drop that that request down significantly and the uh overall we're looking at a 62 6.2% increase of the overall operating budget any other questions on the operating budget before I move on to Emergency Management and capital that's my question finance committee members have any other questions for the chief right now no anybody on the line have any questions for the chief right now I'm not seeing any hands waving or okay good I do have one of the capital allocation Stephen what was that I do have a question with respect to the capital request but I'll hold until Chief has a chance to walk us through that all right thank you Stephen goad Chief all right just make sure I remember how Mark told me to do this here all right just uh going to take a quick look at our Capital request for uh the fire department and Emergency Management um for fire Pro protective clothing this is an annual uh request um we've increased that request to to $50,000 for this year this funds the firefighters uh turnout gear um head to toe and um also some uh equipment for those members protective equipment that are on those special teams um as of January 1st of this year uh legislation was passed for all firefighting equipment that's that's manufactured from that from that point forward to have um labeling on it that if there's any pasas in the gear um most of our gear right now um has the lowest amount of pasas in it that that the manufacturers provide um we made we started to make that Implement that switch about four years ago to get to the lowest levels possible um but the manufacturers are required to increase labeling by January 1st of next year um they have to manufacture the gear with no pias at all um we don't know what that's going to look like for what it's going to do to the cost of the gear yet the vendors have provided us no information um so we're we're kind of sitting back and waiting to see what happens there um but the the $50,000 request um funds um replacement gear um that's contractually required every uh employee uh is outfitted with two sets of turnout gear um so our newer people when they when they reach the end of their one-year probationary period they get a second set of turnout gear um the turnout gear itself is only uh good for 10 years by industry standard um the standards require at five years for their once they're issued a new set when that set becomes 5 years old it becomes their second set of gear um and then they're issued a new set set and then at 10 years it's taken out of service um so we are we are replacing gear quite frequently um so that's that's that Capital request um second one is for our self-contained breathing apparatus of $35,000 um we received grant funding Federal grant funding back in 2016 um to replace several uh pretty much our entire cache of uh self-contained breathing apparatus the air packs themselves don't have an expiration date but the the cylinders that actually that that is where the air is contained um you can only test so many times and then they have to be removed from service so we have several of those cylinders that have to be removed from service this year um so that's why we see a little bit of an increase in that request this year compared to previous years uh our radio Capital request is another annual request um which we've kept the same as in years past at $110,000 um that's to purchase new radios as needed um occasionally radios are damaged on calls um a portable radio like the one I'm holding here um can cost $4,000 um and these aren't the ones that the firefighters are issued to bring into buildings those are a little bit more expensive at a little over $6,000 our ambulance request uh this is the one that'll be going to a warrant article um historically we've requested um funding for ambulances every other fiscal year um on the even fiscal years so it's time to to make that request um ambulances are currently taking about three years to build um so it's it's it's very important to me that we that we support this article and that we fund this uh request um pushing it back a year means we're four years out from getting a new ambulance um we have three ambulances in the fleet with our ambulance replacement program the way it uh typically would line up is that the oldest ambulance would get replaced when it was about 6 seven years old and had about 100,000 miles on it because of the delays in produ production that we're seeing right now um our oldest ambulance is getting closer to about 8 years old when it's finally replaced um with well over 120,000 miles on it so as we see those miles start to go up we can expect uh increased repair and maintenance costs go ahead um so uh in 2024 did we uh did the town approve an ambulance that's on order that we're expecting in X number of years as well we're we're we're hoping to see it in August we have one in the pipeline right now we W the pipeline right now yep yep so in FY 24 um we appropriated 355,000 um the vendor anticipates and and a little bit of is some guess work that we should we should factor in about 8 to 10 % increase per year on on on the cost so that's that's the that's where I got the $410,000 request excuse me oh I'm sorry uh Stephen has a question on theine Stephen thank you Andy um Chief good afternoon um given the challenges that you just noted in receiving ambulances in a timely fashion is there anything to change CH the periodicity with which you order or seek to get approval from from town meeting for an ambulance I'm sorry Mr chair I missed a just a small portion towards the end there is there any consideration and then I lost you for changing the timing of your requests for new ambulances um it's been a consideration um that the feedback we're getting from the vendors is that the the this production delay isn't going to last forever um they're they're they're feeling as though they're starting to get caught up the delays all started in covid um and they just haven't got caught up since then but they are making some progress so we're thank you kind of kind of waiting and seeing right now yep understood thank you thank you other questions Barbara Chief do we get anything for the old ambulance or does it just get thrown away um we get a trade in value um from our vendor that we use for the purchase of the new one um the the value is not great um I have you know thought about and have mentioned to Carrie about you know maybe some Alternatives going forward about putting it to auction um something we haven't done traditionally but um something I'm exploring oh thanks um and I will say you know we we recycle a lot of the equipment for our ambulances um there's nothing really extra built into that request um for equipment uh many times you see municipalities are asking well over $500,000 for their ambulances um and they're building into those those requests um all new equipment so new stretchers new power load systems and all that so we actually we we do our best to strip equipment out um as long as it's still functional and test properly um to reuse it in our new ambulances to try to keep the cost down Chief I'm I would urge you to move on to the dispatch question um because we're starting to run yep time is running out thank you here we are um so as I mentioned when I presented to the select board um the initial assessment was over $100,000 the state funding um came through and the final assessment for FY 26 is $ 61,2 188 Joan you had a question thank you Mr chair uh I'm assuming you've already uh worked on going through the the numbers for the difference between leasing the ambulance and buying it outright um we have looked at it in the past um it's just it's always been the best value to to purchase it um it's just that's kind of been our long-standing policy um I think it's been mostly you know a town policy has always been traditionally to try to purchase when we can okay thank you got J um so Fire Department dispatch um I'm here to answer any questions you might have um I touched on it a little bit um this is going to make of our seven Personnel assigned to each shift as I mentioned one of those firefighters is assigned to dispatch each shift for the 24-hour period um that can often um as today is a perfect example can become a revolving dorm Personnel um this morning we had six simultaneous calls going on um and we had people coming in from off duty um that would go to the desk so the people that were in the station could go on to the next call and then they were jumping off the desk to go on another call and our EMS Captain was coming downstairs to dispatch um and it it can just become this huge revolving door so this morning we had six simultaneous calls um just as I walked in here we had an additional six simultaneous calls um so when we get in these really busy times um it it's we've we've done a really good job over the years um but as our town and as our department has gotten much busier um it's it's just not the best service for the town um in my opinion we put just so much work into training our Personnel to be the best paramedics and EMTs and firefighters we can possibly find on the cape they do a fantastic job and their resources are best utilized out in the field uh providing front- facing services to the community questions not seeing any so far all right Chief are you then going to talk about CMS um I don't have much else um I know in the interest of time um I don't feel like I to bring you through this budget book like I mentioned the uh the Emergency Management um operating budget is level funded I am requesting a 3% increase on the the uh Deputy director's salary uh does anybody else on the committee have questions for the chief anybody else online have questions for the chief right seeing none I'd say thank you Chief all right all right you want me to touch on the cap and Islands one no s okay it's a $600 increase yeah okay thank you for your service and for all of your members actually Andy excuse me um Chief one other thing you do such a great job with the intern program I just I get you deserve a lot of credit for that oh thank you we love having him and I will say as I'm getting this pulled up for chief Anderson um we were fortunate enough one of our uh previous High School interns we've hired um as a full-time firefighter which is a first that's great all right thank you thank you Chief Anderson trying to find this for every bu yeah good luck might need you mark try that one these are all me yeah what's that one right there I don't know where your budget book went though oh we can do it here yes sorry just thinking about it the again back to the the dispatch and the Staffing and things like that would would you and you mentioned the six calls simultaneously today and people coming in things like that so in that kind of a scenario in theory you have one less person that would have to come in and and things like that so there probably is some you know theoretical certain scenarios where you're not going to be pulling someone in because you've already got that fourth person for yeah exactly there is a theoretical um small Savings in overtime it's just it's really impossible to quantify yeah yeah where we you see that happening I mean how often are you are you going outside when it was three going outside and bringing in a fourth or fifth person for pretty much anytime the ambulance goes to the hospital we we attempt to backfill the station mhm not not always necessarily with three people um so for example like right now if we have seven people on duty and three went to the hospital we'd only be bringing one back in um to give us five people at the station right um so we'd at least be able to staff another full call so there' be some there there really is some some Pro probable likely savings there's some probable likely um incremental savings but it's it's it's hard to quantify because we don't have a mandatory call back system so if people decide that they want to start coming back more than they're doing now um then that savings could be variable right but you'd only call them once you went past the however many are are out because you've got one more that's that's yep capable of heading out exactly yep okay all right thank you good thanks Chief Tano Chief Anderson your turn in the barrel I Echo most of the fire chief statements so hopefully that'll shorten my presentation um Mike Anderson uh police chief it's it's always a pleasure to come and speak before your board and your committee uh I appreciate your time um I would like to introduce my deputy chief Lou Malzone and my lieutenant Sarah Harris uh they are my in some cases here my subject matter experts in case I need it uh you'll be hearing a couple of times from from Deputy Malon in this presentation uh but I will I will begin um so it's it's custom for me to come up and ask you for money and ask you for Capital items um but I think this is the first time I'd like to say thank you I'd like to begin my presentation with a thank you um when you have capital projects uh for other departments it's easy to drive by and see the progress of a pump station or uh an upwell facility uh but sometimes it's difficult to see what is the return on the investment on what you've given us in the past and I just want to highlight a couple of things real quick when I first came here uh was came before you as the chief in 2022 I wanted to increase our training budget for just the sole reason to give us uh more employee value and make us more valuable for at least their officers value and the Departments and the communities value and my goal with the uh monetary increase was to increase our training budget by 10% and since then that first year we were able to increase our training budget by 16% so thank you um 2023 we uh implemented and introduced a Community Service Officer program uh we all can agree that that's been a huge success I thank you for that last year we increased that by one um and again thank you for that I think the community is very receptive to that program and I appreciate that with that last year we implemented a new parking enforcement program uh we went to electronic ticketing we also increased the fines uh and because of our fifth Community Service Officer and extra attention from our Patrol officers we were able to increase the tickets issued by by almost 50% uh with an 106% increase in fines and last year's fine total was 100 almost $145,000 so thank you um and lastly we are in the first probably six months of our body one and Cruiser mounted camera program um I came before you last year and I and I said that it would improve evidence collection it would increase our transparency it would increase our officer safety and it has improved our training opportunities and it has we've seen in this short period of time many court cases uh with the uh data and the Imaging and the statements and the evidence that these cameras have been able to capture have assisted Us in presenting a really strong product at the court level it's been able to hold my offices accountable for their professionalism and their conduct and it really has deterred a lot of so far frivolous complaints that we would normally get in our routin course of business so again I thank you in addition to the body War camera with your generous gift from last year we were also able to secure a $44,000 Federal grant so we are in really good shape with this body Warn and Cruiser camera uh program going forward so again thank you very much again here's a snapshot of our calls for service uh I will say that it is a positive note that we are in a little constant state of decline for calls for service but I do want to highlight some things that I think are concerning uh and that and you and the community should be aware of this is just a small snapshot of what your offices do in a yearly basis um 6,814 documented calls for service and again every number in red that you see is an increase from the previous year which is in the parentheses so if it's a black number it's less if it's a red number it's higher and you will see that even though our calls for service has decreased from last year our total reported criminal offenses have increased uh total number of Motor Vehicle crashes have increased um we've had an increase so small in our burglaries and breaking and enterings and again even though the majority of our property crimes and most of our quality of living crimes uh which again a lot of people care about those have steadily and positively declined last year we've seen a concerning uptick uh of some of the the crimes that I've highlighted in the box to the right we've seen an increase in aggravated assaults simple assaults intimidations weapons law violations which include Firearms uh an increase in disorderly conduct uh always a troubling increase in fraud and an increase in drug and narcotic violations if you asked me why I would say this is just the world we live in I I don't have a better answer than that uh but again we have a very robust training budget and in as much opportunity that we can we train we train we train you will see the bottom four numbers those are proactive uh tasks that the patrol officers do you'll see that they did in the course of last year almost 13,000 building and property checks uh parking tickets we issued 2, and 84 an increase from last year's 1397 again the the ease in which the tickets were issued and the increase of the persons able to issue the tickets uh justify that number um and we processed uh just about 748 police records and again processing a police record is a little bit more labor uh intensive because it usually requires a review and a redaction uh and then it might require a uh an exemption we might refuse it they might fight us on it we might have to you know go to the uh Massachusetts uh secretary the Commonwealth and and and settle what we think can or cannot be re be redacted or or released uh currently yes excuse me before you leave can you uh tell us what the process is for attaining a firearm permit and who's the final Arbiter of the issuance of the permit the the firearm process is constantly changing the last year it became a little bit more restrictive because of the Commonwealth uh instituted new restrictions as far as what type of training and what type of criminal history you might have in the past um most of the guidelines are found online when I have my two Firearms licenses licensers at the station process the paperwork I as the police chief and the am the ultimate Authority on whether that Firearms permit is issued or not thank you okay you're welcome Chief the 125 is that up from previous years or it's it's up slightly it's up very slightly I I apologize that I I didn't update the the red the yellow highlight was me to to update that but the 125 is a small increase um Stephen has a question goe Stephen we're not hearing him well maybe that'll help things that's noting your observation chief that um these crimes in the box to the right of your roster uh reflects the world we live in are there any of these things that are tied together in any way that we can draw conclusions from uh in an effort to to reduce the incidence of some of these things Stephen that's a great question um if if if there was an easier way to find a solution to reduce these uh I would be all ears I believe that a lot of the conduct that is displayed by some of these actors in town are are influenced through social media um their their their uh aggressiveness towards the police uh you you can find many examples of this similar conduct that you would find on a YouTube video uh a Tik Tok video uh what you see on the news um the the regard to be more challenging to the police uh not not respecting our Authority but challenging our Authority trying to escalate us uh as opposed of us de-escalating them um it it's almost uh a culture of I I don't want to say entitlement or or just ignorance to the rules and regulations but that's that's usually what we're up against interesting okay thank you that's I hope that answers your question it does thank you pardon me Tracy go ahead thank you Mr chair um thank you Chief uh question is the increased occurrence does that reflect an increase in the number of people committing the crimes or is there a greater amount of people like are these often repeat offenders that are sort of known to the police department or is this an increase in the number of offenders it's an increase in the number it many many years ago when we had less of a population or or less of a tourist population or less of a visiting population um the intimate of the community was much more known you knew you pretty much knew who the the the Bad actors were um the past few years whether it's the the the increase in the rental opportunities uh the increase in the hotel motel vacancies uh or or just folks just down for the weekend um most of the crimes um that you see in that box un fortunately more more of the random um not localized um again we we have seen a a what again you know the the the population increased since the covid pandemic that that where you roll the sidewalks up in the fall that never went away after covid uh there's a considerable in my opinion much more of a year- round presence all right okay thank you um this is our current Staffing it has not changed um we have a chief a deputy chief and Lieutenant they are here we've got five sergeants uh one of those sergeants is assigned to the school resource officer uh out of our 14 police officers currently we have two vacancies uh we do have two reserved police officers four dispatchers and Animal Control uh one Administrative Assistant the total Swan Personnel is uh 2 to um if you caught the select board uh a week or two ago um the police department has asked for a staffing increase and uh the town manager has supported the increase of one position so we are looking to increase our staffing for the first time since 1984 to make our total sworn personnel uh go from 22 to 23 and that would be an addition of a police officer position Mr chair sorry j thought I'd catch you before we went on to something else what uh would a new police officer do for you that you can't do now wow many things uh first of all it would allow for a decrease in the forced overtime that we have currently for our staff um it is not unusual uh daily weekly that we have several shifts that are have overtime that is forced caused by vacancies um it would increase the amount of service that we can provide to the community um whether it be the addition of a specialized position whether it be a detective or a mental health officer um it allows much more uh coverage to the community but again it it would hopefully reduce the amount of overtime that's budgeted reduce the amount of for overtime currently that our 14 police officers and five sergeants are forced to endure and hopefully free up some abilities to create some more specialized positions currently that we do not have okay thank you Chief you're welcome Mr chair go ahead er uh thanks Chief um the current vacancy you have um how long has that been open and have you had any any applicants that you've reviewed for that great great question um the the police officer uh Market is very very competitive you will see the budget this year uh most of the increases are because of the salaries we had a very successful contract negotiation which went into effect July 1st of last year which which brought the police officer salary from last June which was the lowest paid on the cape to right now which is about the fourth from the top highest paid uh we offer competitive salary we offer competitive uh benefits uh however so do many other police departments um we Face the same residency or or resident challenges um if we were to get those positions filled which we are currently advertising right now the goal is to get those two positions identified and um enrolled in the next Police Academy which would be in Plymouth the deadline for that is February the academy start date is Honorable the beginning of April M Mr chair go ahead I hope that I hope that answered your question excuse me um well the current vacancy has is someone that we we've had a position for but they someone left or something along the way is that correct cuz you have this and then the request for for an additional the the last vacancy that we've had open for a significant amount of time was open because of litigation um and we had to wait for that position to clear the the litigation decision before we could replace that position that's correct okay so the the current the you you the position you call current vacancy on the board here is an addition to the one that you're requesting for this next year or that is that is the we're budgeted right now for 22 sworn positions from myself all the way down to the lowest ranking police officer right now out of that 22 we have 20 we have two that are unfilled we're requesting a 23rd okay so if that's approved there'll be three and you and you don't fill anything between now and then there'll be three opening correct yes we're we're trying hard to fill them excuse me Mr Jo please and how much will it cost the town to send uh a new officer to the academy depending upon if they're a lateral transfer they could come in at a higher step than entry level but if it's entry level uh they would come in as a step one that brings them to the police academy recruit it costs about 56 57 5800 uh for the Academy tuition but to outfit a brand new police officer with the uniform and equipment that could be up to additional 10,000 okay say say those figures again please for the Academy is how much um I'd have to double check but it's it's around 5700 5800 okay and that's a a 20 we 800 hour Police Academy yeah that's that's not a bad price for that amount of training no it's it's it's pretty good and and they are they are compensated they are they are paid while they attend the police academy okay yeah thank you you're welcome all clear excuse me Mr chair stepen has a question Stephen go ahead thank you ready um Chief how has your bonus program been working out is it been a benefit to recruitment it it does Stephen that's a great question we were we were the first police department on the cape that offered a signing bonus and a recruitment bonus uh that incentive program has now been cop CED by many however um thanks to our town government and our town finance our monetary value for our uh signing bonus and our internal recruitment bonus is still higher than other Cape departments uh but but again the the caveat to that is if if we're looking to to to take another police officer from another agency via a lateral transfer we we want them to come to chadam for a lot more reasons than a monetary signing bonus if that's the only reason why this police officer is is leaving where they are to come to chadam that's they they would have to show me that they need to be interested in more than that yep fully understood um given that one of the last positions that was supported by town meeting uh I think is in Residence at the police station could you just spend a moment commenting on the impact or prospective impact of the substance abuse recovery person who is engaged Steve if I think if I heard you you're looking me to highlight our substance abuse recovery coach and our Behavioral Health clinician correct just a little snapshot of how they're doing I I could I could stand at this Podium for another hour and highlight the great work that they've done um the the behavioral health clinician meets at the police station every Wednesday from noon to before to give you an example she was at our police station this morning on a follow-up case she works far outside her expected hours of service that she gives us she's a contract employee from the opioid settlement uh she comes to us from Outer Cape Health last may we hired the behavioral health clinician we we couldn't have picked a better person a better candidate um she works very hard every month she submits a report which I include in my monthly report and she finds her way to my office and says geez you know I every month my numbers decrease and I'm like no that that's a good thing um she's she's extremely uh professional extremely helpful with my officers and the members of the community who are at risk she splits time with the police department and the uh Center for active living and on a side note we had an interview yesterday for our second open position and fingers crossed uh I I I couldn't we couldn't be happier that's terrific thank you very much okay Barbara So Chief if someone wanted to Avail themselves of her services do they just have to know when her hours are or do they call the Station or how how do they get a hold of someone if they feel at risk but haven't been identified by somebody else in town great great question we advertise that and I think you can find the hours or the cont information on the town's website however to answer your question directly anybody with any information or any type of Crisis can call the police department 247 365 the clinician is usually working Monday through Friday 8 to 4: she is she doesn't have to be but she is available on nights weekends and holidays and she has been in the past um when she co-respondents with the behavioral health clinician um again the the very generous with their time but if if they need to contact or they are in crisis please please contact us thanks okay good to go so this is our current Fleet and again I'll just highlight the fact that we have six six marked Ford Explorer vehicles our oldest two in the fleet our 2019 and you will see why in our Capital request we're looking to to update that um myself the deputy and the lieutenant uh all have take-home vehicles um we we need those the uh 24 F150 the F250 I'm sorry that's a typo it's an F250 um that that has finally arrived uh and the Animal control officer Transit Connect um that finally arrived that was they were over a year to be built but that's current ly AET 18 total Vehicles any questions okay look what's that doesn't look like it Chief okay um so I'll I'll start with the capital request again um as as we have in the past uh we are asking for two annual Cruiser replacements for two two for two 2025 Ford Explorer police interceptors um this is a regular replacement uh to keep the fleet up and running for our emergency response and our routine calls for service and our Patrol duties um why we ask for two every year is by rotating and replacing the mark vehicles on a regular basis it maintains the vehicle's value at a regular tradein it maximizes our savings by keeping the mileage and the repair costs low most of their service while with us is under warranty um the reasons why the cost this year is a little bit higher than in the past is because this these two would be replacing the 2019 uh vehicles and since that time the Ford Explorer has tweaked the body style the body shape the interior just enough so that when we take the equipment out of the 2019s sure enough they don't fit in the 202s and if they did the 2019 equipment that we would be we we would be moving into the old into the new equipment has really reached its end of life because if you have uh center consoles and cages and mounts and brackets since 2019 remember that these vehicles are operated all day every day 24 hours a day they get a heck of a lot of use and abuse and most of the Interior equipment would be unable to be transferred over because they've reached their end of life or they just don't fit the new vehicle models any questions Chief do these come off the state bed they do they do okay so they're we're still able to do that I wasn't sure yep and we we use a company uh Commonwealth Motor Group Colonial Motor Group they're great um they're they're great their service is fantastic they're just waiting for our for your approval okay great thank you okay any other no doesn't look like it okay um this is a a Polaris UTV uh we we asked for this last year but it was more of a low priority however last year boy we wish we had it and I'll tell you why uh first of all it's we're asking for a 2025 Polaris UTV Ranger this is almost what the model that we would be asking for looks like except our uh model would have a secure enclosed tab it would have Heats it would have air conditioning it it's a a two passenger vehicle it increases our Operational Support and response um these are some of the things that the fire department which has one uses their UTV 4 they use it for July 4th they use it for search and rescue um remote Patrol enforcement beaches and woods and they sometimes loan it out or take it out to other communities from m ual Aid why we are asking for one and why we think it's important is because last year we have seen an incredible uptick in calls for service in areas where response by a police cruiser can't happen give you some examples um we had a couple of incidents on North Beach Island um there was a large party honor about Fourth of July uh and we did Logistics to plan for the what we thought was the plan one for Labor Day this could be used on North Beach Island because other than that the patrol officers would have to patrol that area on foot social media can work against us because at any night during the summer social media can invite 200 300 400 total strangers to any Beach or any conservation land in our community and now we respond to a a beach or a conservation land with a 200 300 400 party uh response call most of these calls happen in remote areas where the police officers would have to respond on foot for example the second lot of hings Beach now they have to walk to the lighthouse at the end with a 300 people a partying um they'd be able to carry Emergency Equipment to and from scenes it also would be beneficial in storm response uh it can navigate down trees down power lines and other structures with this type of vehicle there's no specialized training that be would be required um we have a four-wheel ATV and to be certified on that you have to go to a uh Emer uh a uh environmental police training course there is nothing required to operate this it's just like operating a regular motor vehicle it would be street legal it would be registered it would have emergency lighting and be clearly mocked um one of the reasons why we we would be requesting a trailer is the same reason we could take it to different locations in town without having to drive it on the street or we could respond to a Brewster a howich a Dennis uh another agency that requests Mutual aid for some type of search and rescue or emergency response just like they respond to chadam when we ask for their equipment um we can pre we can pre this um and again I I'm going from my notes here last year we had over a 100 calls for service reporting large beach parties with several hundred attendees with alcohols fireworks fighting uh and some of these are in very remote areas that are unable to be accessed by a police cruiser um so last summer we asked if we could borrow one from bonable County and they were gracious enough to let us borrow uh something similar but a different makeing model and and I'm I'm glad we have it because I don't want to uh throw the fire chief under the bus because um The Loner was very useful especially over the Fourth of July period because the fire department's UTV was out of service so we were lucky to have the loner to act and give to the fire department to help them with their response um while there's was under repair and again I mentioned the trailer would allow us to store it and transport it um and I'll I'll take any questions Mr chair Stephen has a question Stephen you're up got two questions first uh thank you Chief um question one is this four-wheel drive yes it's four-wheel drive all right question two is what's its over the road speed 45 40 to 60 Stephen wow okay terrific that's what I need to know thank you all but but Chief I'll not it probably is not amphibious right it is not so getting to North Beach Island becomes a different logistic the Haba Master does have a vessel that can accommodate that it's it's almost I hate to describe it like a landing craft boat but they have a boat with a ramp on it are you talking you're talking about the morning scal probably yeah I can't imagine it fitting on any other har Master vessel yeah okay I just was curious I'd hate to see this thing go to the bottom of the Bay same same as I but no we we we almost uh we had the ability to take the loner that we had last year out to North Beach Island we we chose against it just for the this the reason because it it just wasn't ours and if anything did happen to it it wasn't ours okay right thank you any other questions for the chief on this go ahead Barber thanks Mr chair um do we have to pay when we borrow them from someone else and if we were to loan ours out would we charge no no it's covered under the mutual Aid agreement but again the benefit of having ours it's ours there's no weight we maintain it we equip it we have the you know the people to drive it we're familiar with it um but again if if if one of our neighbors called for assistance we'd gladly provide it right guess not go ahead Chief okay so I going to call up Deputy Malzone here and he is going to talk about um our request for a weapon weapon mounted optic system good afternoon Lum alzone Deputy Chief of Police so this request is for a regular replacement of our department Firearms which we try to replace every 3 to four years um like our Cruisers that are operated 24 hours a day 7 days a week our Firearms are deployed with the officers every day they're in the elements um fortunately um um not deployed from the belt very often but they are out in the elements they do get hundreds to thousands of rounds of training ammunition uh put through them uh every year for training events uh and the reason other reasons why we um trade them in of course uh to avoid the maintenance costs for dependability issues and to keep the the trade in value reasonable like we did in 2022 when we replaced the Firearms we added the mounted light system system that you can see uh below the the front of that uh firearm uh and that was you know another piece of equipment um prior to that the officer had to decide you know how they were going to hold their flashlight and low light situations and then the firearm was held with one hand so as training uh evolved and tactics evolved so of the equipment so the the addition of the uh mounted light system um was a great piece of equipment to uh help in low light no light situations so the Red Dot optic as you can see on the AIX to the top of the firearm there uh what that device does is it projects an LED light into the lens you're seeing which allows the shooter to superimpose that red dot over their target um so just a few quick uh advantages and comparisons so with the weapon mounted optic system it's a fast to Target acquisition it's improved in low life performance improved situational awareness and improved round accountability now improving situational awareness and the round accountability is uh probably the the biggest benefit of that uh traditionally uh with a firearm uh with this you know regular sighting system um depending on whether you're someone who is right eye dominant left eye dominant you're closing one eye to acquire your sites to acquire that front sight some people have the gift to be able to keep both eyes open I don't have that gift um so it almost forms tunnel vision when you're sight focused which you could then see how in a stressful situation it's almost like looking through a pin hole with the um mounted optic system the idea of that is that you're Target focused and any shooter once they're trained and proficient with that can keep both eyes open and they can see everything around them uh which improves their situational awareness and their target Focus all you need to do is put that red dot on your intended target um one of the Cardinal rules in shooting is know your Target and know what's beyond and when you're have tunnel vision or you're site focused it's hard to see what's around you so that's the that's the advantage of um the Red Dot optic and again it's just another piece of equipment to equip our officers and help them be successful in critical situations is Joan thank you Mr chair uh Deputy yes that's an amazing weapon who manufactures it so we use uh Glock and we have not decided on a manufacturer for the optic yet um there's several different ones um and I just want to note also that included in that request is the training and the ammunition required uh it'll be 16 hours of training and off officer and approximately a th000 rounds per officer um which is required to be able to carry that which sounds like a lot um but you know going from another site system to a new one it's you know it's it is it's a big change um you know we're seeing people coming out of the cies who are trained with the optic having no issue with it but someone who's been you know on the job 5 10 15 years who have been using regular sites it it is a a transition so that's why 16 hours but you're not looking at any certain manufacturer at this point we we we are we we are going to stay with Glock for our firearm and Glock has a couple different programs with manufacturers one's called aimo one's called hollow sun uh it just depends on what package and what the price point is and what they're willing to give us for trades for our current Firearms thank you sure Barbara Mr chair um this is going to sound stupid but is so is this weapon mounted optic system is that just one gun that comes like that with the attachments or do you can you get attachments and put them onto guns that you already have we cannot we cannot so the um the the top of that firearm you see there is called the slide our slides are not milled correctly to attach an optic to it and they've actually they're moving on from the model that we carry now so to order it was not coste efficient to try to have our SL buy new slides that are manufactured to hold that optic they wouldn't be from Glock there would be a aftermarket company making them for them so it's it was not the right option not something you want to pick up off Amazon right how many of those are we getting so uh well all 22 officers I think I think we're looking at probably 28 to 30 um in in case go down and um we're just kind of come and we the price was for 30 okay for 30 and we'd come in under 40 or at 40 Deputy is do you have to make any changes to the duty holster and retention systems yes yes thank you good question and that included in that request is the new holsters okay right go ahead Tommy thank you does that project a DOT on the what what it's aiming at no it does not it's not you mean like a laser you know no it's not visible on the target itself it's projected onto that Glass Lens you can see there and then it's obviously calibrated on the on the weapon for point of aim other questions for the deputy no oh go ahead Tracy just out of curiosity how do we have a concept of how often oh I mean I'm sure it varies but our weapons have been discharged in by necessity as opposed to just training purposes fortunately for us other than um probably a a small number of calls yearly for wildlife uh fortunately it's training exercises okay I don't see any others anybody online doesn't look like it all right Deputy thank you thank you great questions everybody okay do this okay perfect and that was the that was the last Capital request that we had oh I missed it I'm I'm sorry stand by again just out of respect for your time just to Echo what the fire chief said uh most of the increases a salary contractual uh educational incentive um the temporary wages that uh that is reflective of the community service officers uh the overtime is is is high because of again uh you know our shortages and again last last year we had a couple of long-term injuries uh longevity um again contractual benefits shift differential cont actual okay the first one I'll talk about is the 5161 ban concert events and I will explain what this is this this account is a is a longstanding account this pays for the police officers to work the uh the paid details at certain town events uh chadam officers are paid overtime for certain events that are not billable uh such as the chadam band concerts the independ Independence Day parade and half of the chadam Anglers baseball games so unlike the phone company the electric company when they hire us for a detail um we we build them the Anglers we Bill half the season and half we absorb under the band concerts and event uh budget item when these positions go unfilled from chadam Police Department offices we request police officers from neighboring agencies through mutual Aid uh these police officers then Bill an invoice us to reimburse them because they can't bill the band concert they can't bill the Fourth of July parade committee so they they bill us so this is how they are reimbursed uh and this in this increase is that over the past few years including chadam uh the average detail rate on Cape cot is increased and I think the detail rate right now is 75 an hour so that is an incredible bite out of that band concert budget um and again it's it's important that we maintain this funding in this account to ensure that these events are properly staffed on few occasions we'd have to not staff uh a baseball game or short staff a band concert we don't want to do that if we don't have to um and again to maintain this funding um allows us to reimburse the mutual Aid requests we have from other outside police agencies any questions go ahead Eric Chief just so I I think I understood what you said so clearly if someone comes from another department it's coming out of this budget but correct chadam officers that are standing those um for those events we pay not out of that out of that line item yes we pay out of that so that line item is for chatam and for incoming yes thank you yeah okay again everything else is level funded except for there's an increase in the uniforms again this equipment the only thing we do is this is a 3.5% increase to reflect the yearly inflation rate this uh equipment that they wear is extremely expensive and then the other increase is again is a 3.5 increase to reflect the current yearly inflation inflation rate for the meetings dues and travels uh all these professional organizations that they belong to whether it's Crash Recon SWAT any type of associations or organizations unfortunately we're at the mercy of their dues increases and again it's a very it's very important that they maintain their certifications with these organizations uh so thank you for that any questions for those two okay Tracy thank you Mr chair sorry Chief I have a question that's not necessar about those two I was wondering if you have a sense of the offset in the overtime amounts that that if filling those now three positions right because there's two that are vacant and one additional that that would that that would create you know a substantial amount of savings potentially in that category so so so the the the the optimistic answer to your question is yes um if if that if we were fully staffed at 23 you would you would assume that that overtime budget at the end of the fiscal year would a lot remaining in it and then we could readjust that budget and possibly lower it for fiscal 27 or as the town manager and I have have discussed we re-evaluate we re-evaluate that to see if a 24th position is is needed or warranted but I ideally the way it's supposed to work is the overtime should go down is the Staffing levels increase however then you increase the salaries with the with the the benefits eligibility and all that stuff so again I I I would defer to carry but um I can give you a small number yes so say um sorry Lieutenant Harris liutenant Harris um a new officer cost us about 62,000 a year for a base salary if you were all those spots that need to be filled right now you were filling with overtime it would be about7 for the median officer it would be about 117 a year so you're saving about $40,000 a year by getting new officer on new Young starting pay officer rather than paying the overtime for all those shifts just kind of a roundabout number don't exact quote me okay good thank you thank you Barbara thank you Mr chair um Chief where does holiday pay come into all of this is that I mean I'm guessing that that is holiday pay that officers get for working holidays not for sitting home because it's a holiday and I mean isn't that overtime don't they get overtime wages for that their scheduled changes so there some days they may be in luck and they have that holiday off they do get paid 13 holidays a year but some of them they're working some of them they're working doubles on it doesn't change their pay on that specific day um it just they get paid out the holidays so 13 a year they each get paid a straight day on depending on what their pay rate is so the reason that that's up so much this year is because we added a 13th day no because of their pay increase over the the like the chief had said July 1 they had um a contractual pay increase so that changed all their salaries and all their payday um holiday days rates one other thing if I may excuse me the um Quinn Bill and continuing ed are both down isn't the Quinn something to do with incentive training um no that's what they already have for education incentive so um and that's grandfathered in for only a few officers now um and then there's an education incentive um that's a tier base for the other officers that's slightly offset from the Quinn so the Quinn bill is a percentage of the payroll um that goes up but as these officers retire that vanishes um and then it's gone down now because of the newer officers that it only increases every five years and continuing ed goes down to I mean I would guess that our newer officers are taking some continuing ed they don't get it until they have an associates degree uh um a bachelor's degree and a master's degree okay so so it's a reward that they get not something that incentivizes them to get training correct okay thank you y and just just to further on that the the the Quinn bill that number number gets smaller because those officers are grandfathered and they are retiring out uh and that's a percentage of their base pay that's factored into overtime the current newer officers their educational incentives is a is a one-time pay stien it's not factored into their base pay all right excuse me Chief and chair um Stephen Daniels has a question Stephen go ahead please thank you Andy um while I share the optimism of the chief uh and the lieutenant regarding overtime and hiring incremental officers I think we can probably find some instruction in our experience with the fire department uh who not withstanding having four new officers over the last several years U their overtime at $900,000 is roughly 2x what it probably was five or six or seven years ago so fingers cross but experience may suggest otherwise that's it okay thanks um the last the last one and I'll probably have some help here from Deputy Malzone but like the like the fire chief said he has a small Capital outlay as do as do the as does the police department and in the past that longstanding uh article that that budget line um was primarily funded to uh cover the lease for our police motorcycle which we have we have purchased um we have kept it as an emergency fund like like when the chief said an an un unexpected emergency happens that we need to repair or replace something that that doesn't necessarily fit in those capital or or operational budget lines just to give you an example the year before last um we lost one of our departmental printers uh copy machines and to replace that was just sell for $112,000 and that small Capital outlay paid for that what what happens now is I'll I'll let the deputy explain it uh we've had uh an equipment uh that's become obsolete uh a very important piece of equipment that's become Obsolete and in need of not repair but replacement and since it was an emergency uh we have already taken the first steps to start the payment and purchasing of this item in in installments so I will let uh Deputy Malzone explain that thank you so back in 2015 we started our electronic control weapon program uh better known as the taser program uh at the time we purchased six taser x2s which are manufactured by axon um we got six of them not every off each officer isn't assigned their own uh like other pieces of equipment so they are taken out or assigned to them at the beginning of the shift uh in in the time uh since 2015 till now taser had axon had come out with a taser 7 uh which we did not opt to purchase U we thought we were um still good with our taser x2s our taser x2s have recently started to fail uh we reached out to axon and we're told that they no longer manufacture those they don't manufacture parts and they don't support them at all um including their uh software that we use to update deployments and um for evidentiary purposes so uh the chief and I met with axon uh in September at the international chief show uh and we were interested in talking to them about the taser 7 and they didn't bring a taser 7 with them so that was so they showed us the taser 10 um the taser 10 um we have ordered eight of them um that comes with a price of 72,1 146 uh we're able to pay that over 5 years um the initial in the initial payment uh just over 15,000 and um the additional four payments 13, $77 uh again we're getting eight of them um right now we're down to three tasers uh we're getting eight so we'll have the six for the road we'll have backups and we'll have one available for special assignments um that's why we're asking for the increase of the $6,900 to fund this uh account with $25,000 to cover this over the next four years Barbara go ahead wut will axon Provide support for these if anything happens to them yes so so this uh purchase price uh includes so it's the eight actual physical tasers it's user agreements for 22 users it includes them coming out and training uh five of our offices to be instructors all the training equipment and supplies that are needed and the so the equipment itself if something bad happens to it they'll fix them for us there there is a warranty I'm not sure the the length of the warranty but yes they will fix them thanks kind of like dealing with a software supplier there always something new right okay uh I guess the only question I had Deputy was do we have any other non-lethal we do we have um uh bean bag rounds and a shotgun but the each officer carries a taser on their belt um the bean bags are secured in the Cruisers okay great thank you sure any other questions for the deputy no doesn't look like like it thank so I'll just speak quickly about the animal control budget uh those are the uh animal control calls for service in 2024 [Music] 517 and again the increases are highlighted in red um one of the reasons that we looked at uh for for the decrease uh of animal control calls for service is not not because she's not busy it's is that um we We have dealt with uh last year and I think that we've found a solution to the problem uh there was a resident that had multiple multiple complaints of livestock and loose animals and there were several hearings uh and that generated multiple calls for service um and and that removal of that um issue uh we hope was uh contributed to the the lower numbers for calls for service uh the Animal control officer Diane buers does a fantastic job we're lucky to have her uh if if um I I can't speak highly enough about her in the program I will bring up her budget here and real quickly you will see that it's a level funded budget the only increase is uh her salary and that's dictated by her contract all of her uh purchases services or operational supplies anything as far as operational budgets uh everything is level funded except for the increases in her salary Again by her contract any questions for animal control she does a fantastic job Chief I I do have a question most because of an experience I had three days ago um I understand that with the spread of the Aven flu that's affecting Shorebirds um I came across 10 or 11 male and female Ider Ducks dead on the shore none of them looked like they had been munched on yet and none of them looked like they had been shot although who can tell for sure my understanding from the feds and from the state was they're supposed to be reported to animal control for some sort of followup is that going to affect her operation or do we get reimbursed for her operation it it shouldn't she has training and how to deal with it and if she doesn't have to deal with it directly she has the um the O other agencies the assisting agencies that she can call and assist her in that as far as handling collecting storing transporting uh it should not affect her at all all right she's not responsible for any of the testing or analysis uh she would be responsible for getting the animals tested through another agency okay all right so she'd act as the liaison MCI Wildlife or something like that yeah okay right good thank youse pretty unusual to put a my way yeah and again on the surface it's it could be pretty concerning too it's uh but we we a lot of the cases that she's had I can rest assure you a lot of them have been hunting yes related or over hunting related so it's that's good to know all right thank you any other questions for the chief go ahead I just before the chief and the fire chief leave I just wanted to uh thank you both for the service of your members and uh for taking care of the safety of of all of our citizens here in chadam thank you thank you Miss brg again it's always a pleasure to to be in front of you and uh we appreciate your support go ahead Tommy uh Chief if you get a report of a wild party could you give me a call [Laughter] you you could I'll I'll you can respond with me in our new UTV how's that barber please go ahead just two teeny little questions um the electronic ticketing how does that work do the officers have like scanners that they scan uh the the electronic ticketing machine looks just like your Apple phone um it looks just like your Apple phone and then they wear a portable printer which is a little bit smaller than my portable radio um they can either scan the uh inspection sticker and the information is backfilled or they can photograph the license plate it acts as a Plate Reader to backfill the uh vehicle information owner information it's GPS equipped so it even tells it backfills the location of the violation so it it lowers the time of of the of the action of documenting the uh the violation so it's a faster time on target to to log the violation uh it's time stamped um and and one of the the one of the things that we've seen is the as well as the increase in the ticket amounts or the fine amounts there has been a significant decrease in the successful appeals uh for these tickets because in the past some of these violators have been very creative with their own photographs or their own uh excuses on why or how they were parked and the system is is pretty robust to defend against any type of frivolous um appeal so we've we've been we've been very successful in the in the appeals process and this will be the first time where there is some real teeth to scoff laws who do not pay these tickets where it now would affect their vehicle registrations or their driver's licenses on being renewed um and the last thing I'm very interested in the drones that we have but I was just wondering there was a woman from harch who several months ago was calling into a radio station and saying that she saw at least three or four drones circling around over her house and I wondered if those might have been ours I I can almost assure you that they're not ours um we had a decision to make recently at our uh first night uh celebration um we have the ability to F to fly a drone we flew it at our uh Independence Day Parade although it was Daylight um and because of the recent concern from the public about drone activities uh we we chose not to fly our drone to just not to even add to any type of concern from the public we didn't see any drone activity over that period but I can assure you that what she was seeing was not one of ours thanks you're welcome Kristen thank you Mr chair um Chief do we have any grants that are being looked at this year um it like the fire department seems to have um received many grants for equipment we were lucky enough to receive the grant last year for the cameras yep I knew I knew that question was going to come up um the grant Market in in law enforcement lately has been pretty I I I don't want to say specific in areas that really don't benefit us uh um larger police departments more urban police departments um there used to be grants that would pay for the first three years of a police officer's salary uh those are few in far between um there's a lot of community policing grants that we do already um what we look for our I really like what the fire department looks for is anything that we could again add a piece of equipment that that is is is a want as opposed to a need and we really try to come in front of of you in the select board in the town meetings with needs as opposed to wants but we we do we do look and again that that $44,000 supplemental grant for the body and Cruiser cameras will will put us in really really good shape going forward questions Stephen did you have a question uh not a question I just wanted to extend my thanks as well I apologize for not being present today uh but uh appreciate everything um Chief Chiefs deputy and liutenant thank you and uh that's it so thank you thank you guys very much very helpful very informative okay it's our pleasure any anybody else on online wants to speak no okay good anybody else in the committee all right if we're done is there entertain a motion to adjourn Andy hold on one sec I do want to just have a quick chat about select board what was that hold on one sec I do want to have we have an agenda item for a report to the select board so in that context I just want to make sure especially since I'm going to be absent for a couple more of these uh unfortunately that um people make good notes on what they think we want to present uh to the select board our initial report to them about the is due to be delivered on February 18th um so I just want everybody keeping that in mind and and tracking issues of of Interest or concern uh so we can synthesize a helpful and appropriate report to the select board what's the date again that you want that by Stephen well it's due February 18 so I'm going to have to start writing this thing the week up the week prior February 13 okay uh in order to be able to circulate it to the committee as a draft and then take final comments okay so as things pop up in people's mind I'd appreciate hearing about it sooner rather than later please okay all right stepen thank you any questions thank you appreciate the help okay all right guess we're good now now a motion to adjourn so moved second second all right great thank you uh those in favor Tommy Don I Barbara Madison I John John P is not here Johan spra yes Andy young yes Christen Andress yes trzy Shields yes Eric Whitley yes and Stephen I don't think you pronounced but that you're saying yes all right I can't see picture but I hear your voice all right thank you very much we're adjourned thank you Chiefs Chief lieutenant [Music]