9.15.2026 City Council Public Safety

Public safety meeting for the City Council Committee on Public Safety, September 15th, 2026, at 5:30 PM.

Clerk, call the roll.

Councilor Canuel?

Here.

Councilor Raposo?

Here.

Chair Peckham?

Pursuant to open meeting law, any person may make an audio or video recording of this public meeting or may transmit the meeting through any medium.

Attendees are therefore advised that such recordings or transmissions are being made, whether perceived or unperceived, by those present and are deemed acknowledged and permissible.

First item on agenda is citizens input.

Nobody on the list for citizens input.

Second item is the minutes from August 25th.

Motion to approve.

Second.

Motion to approve has been made and seconded.

All those in favor?

Aye.

Aye.

The ayes have it.

Item number 3, a resolution to convene to discuss the potential installation and maintenance of AEDs within all city-owned parks.

This was adopted on July 14th, '26.

Sorry, who's on that?

Um, yeah, fire chief, EMS, and mayor's office is fine.

And the parks director.

Oh, sorry, Darren, I didn't see that.

Good afternoon.

Good afternoon.

So if you can go around the table, Darren, start with you.

Introduce yourself and title for the record.

Darren Medeiros, Parks Director.

Jeffrey Bacon, Fire Chief.

Beth Fawn, CMS Chief.

Ann O'Neill-Souza, City Administrator.

And Chris Peckham, Chair.

So I believe this was your resolution, correct, Councilor?

It was.

So if you want to open up with this, that'd be fantastic.

Thank you, Mr.

Chair.

So this was a resolution that was originally filed by Councilor Kadim.

And it was— it didn't move anywhere.

So I had refiled it essentially with a little slight change, and I spoke to the Director of Parks regarding this concern.

And this actually came forward from a school nurse that also her son plays baseball in one of our local parks.

And one of the conversations that came up was, is there an AED accessible in some way, shape, or form?

And it seems like it's inconsistent.

So I had talked to Mr. Medeiros about it, and we had He had come up with some ideas.

So essentially, I wanted to give him the opportunity to report back on what he has in hopes that we can put something together to, to solve this issue.

So, so, Darren, doing research on it, I'm not expert on this.

We had originally talked in-house about installations outside.

They are quite expensive.

And then we had discussed more so maybe putting them in the buildings of the leagues that are currently operational.

So they have access during games and during the playtimes.

I brought some packets, there's some stuff when I did, if you're getting them out, it's just, it was just stuff about outdoor installation things that I had put together when I first talked to Councilor Raposa.

Just shows some pricing, which way we go with it.

Thank you.

We haven't come to a conclusion with that yet.

In conversation, I think the biggest need that, in talking with the leagues, has come from Father Kelly Park, the softball league, and Maplewood Park.

Those are the 2 leagues that I interact with that they expressed interest in.

Out of curiosity, so you mentioned Father Kelly and Maplewood.

Maplewood, okay.

So I know Dumont has an active softball league.

So Dumont was another one I hadn't really had discussed it with them.

Okay.

Yeah, so I think part of the conversation, I think originally was spurred initially from an incident at Father Kelly Park, and then I ended up speaking to you, I think within that same week, about AEDs in parks.

Yep.

Speaking with the presidents, they— I think speaking with Mapewood, I think a year before they had looked into it, but— and they were looking into grants and things like that.

I talked to the grant writer.

She had basically said that the grant grants were for EMS and fire, geared more towards them and not towards parks.

Okay, so I guess I'll defer to the chair, but I'm curious if we can have any thoughts from our public safety officials and then city administration on, um, how we could possibly move forward with this.

I'll yield the floor.

Yeah, so Mike, I have a question.

My question would be, is this for the leagues or is this overall for the park, for general access?

So I think the intention of my resolution was to cover essentially all of it, but obviously I think To Darren's point, I think what I'm looking at in front of me is a phased approach, which makes sense.

I think the immediate need would be kits, right?

And obviously, I think our parks are used in an organized method, like a league, for example, baseball league, soccer league, whatever it may be.

So, I think that would be my first crack at it.

But ultimately, I think in my head I envision every, all of our city parks having an AED accessible to the public.

Where, you know, if somebody's just enjoying the park and there's an incident, you can go to that AED.

And there's technology out there that then allows when, when somebody pulls the AED, automatically 911 is called.

So it's kind of a collective approach.

But I think my first target would be the leagues because of the kids, obviously.

So I think part of it, when you get into an outside installation, it gets complicated, it becomes New England weather, they had the box has to be heated.

Then it becomes the vandalism where, uh, you know, you open the box, there's pictures taken of the— of who's opening the unit, and 911 is notified.

Then there's the monitoring of the unit, which is, uh, to make sure these are ready to go 24/7.

So instead of having like just parks guys monitor that, which I wouldn't recommend, is I would rather have, uh, it monitored by the company that it's ready to go, so there's no liability like on that end.

And then they alert you when it's down, it's not ready to go, so it can be up and running.

Yeah.

I have several questions.

When I— in my prior job, I was the fire and health and safety officer for the Bridgewater Complex, and my job every morning was to go around to each unit and inspect the AEDs, so it was a morning test.

So that's one question I have is, how often are we testing these?

Are we doing it daily, which I believe most of the companies recommend?

Weekly, monthly?

And then on the flip side to that is if we buy these, and we put them in the Little Leagues, and something goes wrong, are we responsible?

So I think part of the systems that are in the packet that I looked at, they offer 24/7 monitoring.

So they're monitored 24/7.

As soon as they go offline, they're notified to get them back, to either rectify the problem.

So that was like the thing on my end.

So did I want to leave that responsibility up to a parks guy cutting grass to say, hey, you know, let him, let him check this life-saving device and make sure it's working?

I wouldn't want to leave that up to that individual.

I would more opt towards the company of a monitoring system.

Like a failsafe.

I understand.

I think there's many questions that would have to be asked in the logistics of this manpower.

Like you said, the ability to house these units in cold weather.

So that— so talking to Beth, I think I spoke to you about this.

Those pads can't freeze.

Once they freeze, they're no good, correct?

I did some, some research when this week— so I'll let you finish.

A couple questions.

First, when you talk about a company being able to monitor it, does that also bring a monthly or annual— it's in the packet that I had researched.

I think there was a cost associated, like a 4-year plan.

They offer a 4-year plan at a time.

And then when you talk about phases, what's your vision as far as Phase 1, 2, 3, how long?

Phase 1 was mostly like the athletic leagues and the bigger parks that are being permitted for leagues and play.

And I guess translate that to is that, you know, Phase 1 is year 1, Phase 2 is, you know, second year.

Are we talking a longer time, shorter time?

And funds too as well.

That's my plan was Well, it'd be phase 1 would be the bigger parks.

Like you talk like Maplewood, the permitted leagues, 300-some-odd kids, Brittlin Park, all these leagues, the presidents, they have access now that Maplewood has bathrooms and it's a powered heated bathroom.

Like, not if you— if it decided not that we were going to do an outside installation there, if that was installed inside the building, like if that became the option, Brittlin Park, the league presidents have keys to those buildings for the access to the bathrooms if we decided to ultimately install inside.

If it was outside, then they would have access to that.

Talking to league presidents, the conversation was any managers or coaches that were going to sign up to be coaches would go for CPR and AED training, and that was something they would sign up for before they would be able to coach and manage in the leagues.

But like, to answer your question, the phases were of importance, like the active leagues now, and then coming down, because you have some, uh, like just say Turner Park, for example, there's no leagues there, has a basketball court, something could happen there.

But on the list of priorities, that's not the one that I would put up against, say, Brooklyn Park.

Now, when we talk about funding this, sounds like grants are not available for this type of grants.

When I talked to Jasmine, the grants that they said were available were more geared toward fire and EMS.

That was, that was the answer I had gotten.

So when I look at the single installation for one, it's looking like $40,000 for 11 So the first couple ones in the packet, these were just ones as I was researching.

The actual last one in the packet was ones that I found.

This Save Station, this was ones that I had found online installed in city parks.

You see, this seemed like a popular unit on, you know, when docks in city parks, open space and rec.

This one is the one that actually offers 24/7 monitoring.

And how much is that unit?

Uh, this unit, it depends what tier you get.

It starts around $3,000, and the 4-year monitoring is $480 for the 4, 4, 4, uh, 4, 4 years is $480.

$2,500 for the cabinet, $480 for the monitor.

And I, I'm not 100% sure it doesn't include the defibrillator at that price.

Do we think that maybe there's an opportunity here to have a public-private partnership where maybe, you know, businesses might be willing to pay $3,500 and sponsor it?

And, you know, they get their, you know, a little plaque that will attach to that unit that says, you know, this unit, you know, sponsored by, you know, name the business that sponsored it.

Or the leagues, like, like, I'm sure there's a lot there.

I don't know.

I mean, I help out a league.

I don't know that they have $3,500.

No, I'm saying that there is an appetite I'm sure for that, because just like, for example, Father Kelly Park, since that incident happened there, they've done fundraising for this specific thing.

And I've been told— I had a dedication Saturday with the mayor for Jack Hackett, and in talking with their fill-in league president, he had told me any money that I've collected up at this point, I'm gonna hand it over to the city for just this specific project for Father Kelly Park.

Okay, I mean, I'm supportive of this.

I'd love to see it everywhere, not just, you know, the more active parks.

I think an emergency can happen anywhere.

It could be someone just going for a jog in any city park.

So whatever, you know, ways we can get this, you know, to all the parks, which is the intention of the resolution, is what I'd like to see.

So with that, you want to— Councilor?

So I guess my question to the EMS and fire chiefs is Is this something that, if you guys are open to the grants, is this something that we could facilitate through EMS and fire to then support our kiddos in the city?

I've never seen a grant that would allow me personally to purchase an AED for placement in public parks.

Any grants that I've seen are for placement on our apparatus to be used in emergency operations.

I'm certainly willing to look for it, but I don't know that it exists.

Okay.

There are public grants that are out there.

Even when you do some research, some of the local areas that have these kind of programs actually have already— that's how they facilitated some of their grants.

This one, this particular one right here is heated.

It's $1,000 for the box and about $1,300 for the— this one has a light-up stand-up unit in it.

That goes in the park so that it lights up, and then you actually can't get into the box until you call 911 and they give you the code for the outside.

Um, it's— I figure between the, the AEDs, the last AEDs we bought were $1,300, and then you have $1,000, $1,200 for the box and about $1,200 for the pole.

So you're looking at about— and then you have to run the electricity, so probably about $5,000 per pole, but how many parks do we have?

23.

A lot.

Yeah, so I think to my colleague's point, I think— I mean, you probably could do it cheaper if we used city electricians.

Could be.

I mean, I would say we're obviously shooting for the highest coverage where in a perfect world every park has it, it's heated, it's electrified and all that.

But I think at the first phase at minimum, to Darren's point, can we prioritize the leagues, number one, where the kids are?

And if it's not an outdoor item, can we look to assist these leagues?

Because again, they're all our kids and they're all taxpayers of the city.

Can we facilitate some sort of way to get AEDs for the leagues?

So I'll turn to the city administrator.

I mean, is that a capital improvement thing that we can invest in to do?

Because I mean, to Councilor Cannell's point, and him and I both worked in the Twilight League, volunteered for the Twilight League in Lafayette for many years, and we all knew that fundraising was tight and every fund that they could use went toward the kids.

They're not— I don't think many of the leagues, and I think you would agree, that will be flexible to spend, you know, $2,000 on AED.

So I'm wondering, if we were to do a phased approach, priority being the leagues that are very active, or active I should say, could the administration seek a way to use some funding to invest into these?

I mean, I would say it would have to be through the capital improvement fund, and then as Darren suggested, phase them in.

Now, I'm going to defer to the public safety professionals in the room.

Are there— there are 2 types of AEDs, children and adult, correct?

The pads are different.

Just the pads.

But I have a question.

Do you think it makes us more litigious if we pick and choose where they go?

Like, in other words, if it's, say, the— we have it for the park and we put it in the house, the league house, and the guy that has the key to the league house isn't there, does that put us into a situation where we bought— we purchased an AD by the city, we made it available, and that person wasn't there and we needed it?

How does that work?

I guess we could We could defer it to Corporation Counsel and get an opinion on it, I'm sure.

I, I would imagine though, just my thought on it, having one versus not having one is 2 different things.

I know that, I mean, the Good Samaritan Law, to answer your question, does cover anybody who performs CPR or uses an AED under the direction of the CAD system.

They're protected, so they— there is no litigation for the city and there's no litigation for anybody who decides to help, right?

So there's that.

And the AEDs themselves are smart enough now where they'll— when you put the pads on somebody, it'll tell you, is it— should we or should we not?

Correct.

So, I mean, like, even the ones I have at school, the 3 we have, literally, well, you plug them in, you attach, and it says yes or no.

Is there a way for the city to explore getting a sponsorship?

Sponsor a— sponsor a It could very well be.

So, I mean, I think there are plenty of creative ideas, but if ultimately grants don't fall through and, you know, a private-public partnership doesn't work, I mean, I would love to see the city invest in our kids, in our— further investment into our parks in this way, even if it's just to get AEDs where the leagues can have them in excess.

Because I think the cost of the AED is steep for the leagues.

I would argue that, you know, the replacement of pads is probably something they could budget for, but the actual unit itself is a deeper dive.

So I guess that's my— I guess that's my question at this point would be, can we exhaust— can we look at if there are any grants, great.

If not, can we look at a capital improvement option for investment, at least at this level, for the leagues that are active at this point?

How many parks do we have?

How many leagues are active, Darren?

Oh, 8.

Okay.

And that's including soccer.

Yeah.

So would it be possible if I could, through the chair to the clerk, can we just connect and get a most updated list of who, what leagues are most active, or I should, I'll change that, what leagues are active at this point.

So this way then we can kind of put our heads together and figure out what that possible cost could be.

The other question is, are you going to focus just on leagues with children, or we have in a number of parks now pickleball?

Yeah, I would— I would— it's the same thing.

So I would say leagues that are active, both children and adults.

And then if we can get that information, which I'm sure you can share with the committee, we can then kind of put our heads together, figure out what that cost would be, and then essentially take it to the next step and see other grants, other not can we look at a capital improvement and we can have a conversation with the mayor and see if he's in support of that?

I can reach out to the grant writer tomorrow.

Okay, I'll yield, Mr.

Chair.

Thank you, Council.

And also, like, um, just that question that Chief Fonz mentioned, uh, whether or not, um, us doing some and not others would make us any, uh, more open to litigation.

If we could get a legal opinion from Corporation Counsel, uh, whether or not, you know, the phased approach would be okay or whether or not we'd have to potentially wait until we could pull one in every park.

Yield.

So I'll make that in the form of a motion, um, because I failed to actually make the motion at that point.

So make a motion to request information from the Parks Director on the current number of active leagues that are both children and adults, as well as opinion from Corporation Counsel in regards to the litigant's piece regarding AEDs in, in the parks in terms of use if it's purchased with city funds in the form of a motion.

It's been made and seconded.

All those in favor?

Aye.

The ayes have it.

Motion to table.

Motion to table has been made and seconded.

All those in favor?

Aye.

Motion to list item 4 from the table.

Second.

A motion to lift item number 4 from the table has been made and seconded.

Item number 4 is a resolution to convene with the administration, Police Chief, Fire Chief, Chief of Emergency Medical Services, Chief of Emergency Management Agency, the Administrator of Community Utilities, the Interim Director of the Department of Community Maintenance, the Director of City Operations, and the Director of Traffic and Parking to discuss the development of strategic Emergency Response Plan, table 429 of 26.

You can go around the table, Chief, starting with you.

Uh, JT Hoare, Chief of Police.

Jeffrey Bacon, Fire Chief.

Chris Hathaway, Director of Community Maintenance.

Um, EMA Director, Chief of Special Services.

Beth Fawcett, Chief of EMS.

Ann O'Neill Souza, City administrator.

So I know that last time we sat and discussed this topic, I just asked maybe to run a list, keep a running list of things, ideas maybe, as to what we could put in this room, what this room needs, maybe a list of upgrades.

If you don't have that, I was supposed to send an email as a reminder.

So I apologize for that.

I forgot to.

But if we can go around the table, if there's ideas for this them, I'd love to hear them, jot them down, get a running list, and then maybe chop away at this little by little.

You know, there's no money up front to take care of this that I know of, um, all at one time.

So maybe like the last project, the phase system or something, we can come up with a list of things that need to, uh, be done and then take them by priority.

So Chief, if you don't mind, I'll start with you.

I think the only thing I— when we had the snowstorm the ability for the new phone system that the city has with voice over IP, maybe working with the MIS director and maybe a deployment, you know, almost like a call-out bag with the phones and how to set that up.

And maybe just a little bit of forethought when we're going into some type of emergency incident, severe weather, to have it already set and planned that we're going to be setting it up.

So I'd rather have it and not need it than need it and not have it.

I think that was the biggest issue because I think up here, the saturation of cell phones, even though I know my phone is through T-Mobile, so it's a, it's the first responder T-Mobile, so you're supposed to get priority on the towers.

I was having issues with cell phone service up here.

So having a hard line would have been good for conferences.

And then obviously, being able to have the bandwidth to take phone calls.

Yeah, I think I agree with Chief Hoare.

I think that what's important now is to come up with some sort of a framework for, you know, what type of incidents are we going to automatically activate the Emergency Operations Center.

And yeah, that was probably the biggest thing here was not having the phones available.

So I agree, I don't know that there's much else that we can do right now as far as this room is concerned.

But we can look into, through the EMA grants, there are grants available for emergency operations centers.

So that's definitely something we could look into, to applying for improvements to emergency operations centers, or trying to figure into a new station or something like that, that would allow some of that funding to be used.

For.

All right.

Yeah.

So with that phone, I know it's completely separate.

My biggest push for up here, and I know we've had conversations, was a second dispatch location.

So if God forbid something happened at the police station, we'd have a backup where we could send our dispatches.

Do you think that would be a large feat in itself?

That'd be a question for you, Chris, I think, right?

Yeah, I think that would be— the PSAP is going to be where the PSAP is.

Currently.

The state could issue a backup if I'm not mistaken?

So part of our grant funding from State 911 is to have a co-op plan.

So each year we have to submit that in order to get the grant funds associated with running a dispatch center.

And part of that co-op plan is if there's a catastrophic incident that happens to the police department, where do we go?

If it was a complete loss and we couldn't get in the building, whether it be natural disaster or or, you know, fire, essentially they would deploy a trailer out here.

The PSAPs— and obviously you worked in the station, you know that those seats are the seats that can only access it.

It's not like a lot of the cloud-based solutions now, you can log in from anywhere.

PSAP is all locked down with encryption and firewalls and things like that.

So I think from a, from a business line standpoint, if we were to have that catastrophic incident happened at the police department, we didn't have the state 911, we'd be calling state 911.

Those calls immediately would be diverted to surrounding towns.

So typically it diverts to New Bedford.

And then obviously we would put in action of getting state 911 to set up a trailer here.

I don't think we're going to have a hot spare to be able to light up a trailer and be able to take state 911 calls.

I kind of looked into that when we were looking into the, the trailer, the public safety command post it's a big process to add additional seats.

I laugh every time.

So New Bedford is still our backup?

Yes.

That was insanity to me back then.

It'll overflow to state 911 because everyone's basically mobile now.

So you don't have landlines like you did in the past.

So when someone calls from a cell phone, it usually will divert to state police first, then get sent to us.

And if we can't take the call because either volume is high or we're down, it would go to New Bedford.

Thank you.

Councilor?

Yeah, just to the Chief's point, in this whole idea, now that we have the mobile trailer for emergency situations, how would the trailer play, if any, let's say hypothetically speaking we had another blizzard like we did before?

Would that be deployed here?

Would it be deployed somewhere else?

What would be a practical use of that trailer in conjunction with an emergency center here?

So I think the point being, if it's going to be emergency weather-related, it's identifying an emergency operations center.

So I think, you know, over the last few decades it's been City Hall sometimes, it's been here.

It's really about— and Chief Aguiar can talk about it— it's accessibility, the ability to get a helicopter in here if we needed to.

If it's on backup power, is there generator power.

There's only certain places in the city that have that ability.

So that's the biggest point.

So if it's emergency weather-related, then I think we just have to be forethought, because I think that's where things started running seamless during the snowstorm, is when we were all in one room and we were able to just— and that's kind of the MEMA model there, that everyone's in the room that can get things done.

As far as special events are concerned, that's kind of where the trailer is set up to be more of an incident command.

For a special event.

I don't think wheeling the trailer out over here for a snowstorm or putting it somewhere near City Hall would be effective.

Yeah, the only reason— and I agree with you— I just, I was curious if there was any practical use of the mobile trailer in conjunction with a setup here, if there's something that you can't do in this room, but that trailer could then provide to you if you were essentially were to park it next to the building.

Probably just be ancillary space that we could use.

Actually, if I think back in the blizzard, it probably would have been good to have that at Conley.

That's probably where I would have deployed the trailer so that they could have radio communications and communications in a warm place when they were dispatching the out-of-state assets.

There's a practicality right there.

It could be a satellite office for the Emergency Operations Center.

Yeah, because if you, you know, like in that situation, having that deployed there at Conley where all the plows were, you guys are all out here that, that actually works.

Yeah, so that's good.

I mean, I, I would— I'm just, again, just trying to throw out an idea that the idea of having another space was helpful.

So yeah, I would think if you had any natural disaster, whether it's a hurricane and you have tree services and power companies and those assets lined up, that'd be a good spot to, to put the trailer.

Perfect.

Yeah, I yield this, Chair.

Thank you.

Uh, just as he mentions hurricanes, it gets me thinking, you know, If there are high winds, is that trailer equipped or grounded, you know, to withstand any type of force?

I wouldn't put that out until the storm was over.

Okay.

All right.

I would say you'd use a building during the storm, and then once you knew everything was safe, then you could deploy the trailer to the area of need.

Makes sense.

Mr. Hathaway, do you have something to say?

Mr. Aguiar, what do you got for me?

Anything?

So I wrote an SOP.

For this EOC.

Everything that we need to have in this EOC, it's in this SOP.

It speaks to everything from MEMA, what they request.

It speaks to department heads.

It speaks to protocol to follow.

So I just kind of finished this up not too long ago because I had a bunch of other stuff I was on, but I can share this with everybody once it's all completed.

I think the most important thing is everybody knows their roles and responsibility, and that's what's in here as well.

Now, that was a question I was going to ask.

As far as an SOP, yeah, an SOP for who?

So is it an SOP for the emergency response for public safety as a whole within the city, or is it just for the fire department?

Okay, so the city as a whole, we have the Emergency Response Book, ESEM Plan Book, okay?

So every emergency within the city, it's in the ESEM Book.

So that's always being updated.

It's a living document.

And it's right there, by the way.

I brought it in just in case you wanted to look at it.

But the EOC plan is also an addendum in that book as well.

It's a shorter version of this, because we have to have that by state regulations.

So MEMA comes down and checks that book, and we got— okay, I'm going to give EMA a boost— we got the highest rating in the Commonwealth for the book that we prepared.

Okay?

So this is just— a lot of that stuff in the book is in here.

Once again, it speaks to fire, police, EMS, public works, the mayor's office, what you have to actually do with within an emergency.

So that's in here.

And I know we all know our roles, but there's specific things that we kind of forget.

And not to be repetitious, but once this is completed and I, you know, proof everything, then I'll just— this is on a thumb drive too, by the way.

I have everything on a thumb drive, so I can disseminate that to everybody once we get it completed.

As far as communication, memo also has a trailer such as state police.

We can deploy that here, communication throughout Massachusetts, the Commonwealth.

So that's available to us as well.

Now, if you don't mind me asking, intervening for just one second.

Now, with the blizzard or any type of natural disaster, let's say, what's the mayor's protocol?

So does the mayor call each chief?

What— how does that process start?

I mean, in this past administration, since we've been here, anytime we're expecting any weather event or we know something's coming on, there's always a meeting in advance.

We always meet with all department heads involved— excuse me— especially Public Safety, and we decide where we'll operate from.

Most storms, thankfully, are not to the degree that they require to open up an emergency command center.

And we— if it's during the week and we're scheduled to be in the building, we're in the building.

If we are— it's going to be in the evening and it's coming in, we have phones going to normally myself for purposes of establishing a 24-hour phone number for people to call.

We give DCM's main number, the mayor's office number, and traffic and parking.

Okay.

So I know the first meeting we had in regards to this, my biggest push was during that board meeting, nobody was in the same room.

And it was, it was, it was atrocious, the communication, just because there was no plan.

That's why I had asked.

I know myself and Chief Hudson spoke a lot during that storm.

And I want to get it to where we have a protocol.

There's a state of emergency, and I'm not telling the mayor's office what to do, but just maybe a recommendation that everybody gets— and I think I mentioned this in the first meeting— either yourself or your designee has to respond here.

You can't do it from home.

You can't do it from your girlfriend's house.

You have to respond here.

You're the chief, you're the deputy chief, whatever the case may be.

If there's a state of emergency called, then you have to be here or a designee.

So that's what I'm looking for from jump from the mayor's office.

There's some type of protocol.

I mean, we, we do have that once a state of emergency.

Yeah, once, once we see that the state of emergency, the mayor and I are in communication right away.

Okay.

And I, as Anne could attest to, I have him sign a declaration automatically if we're going to use it or not, it's signed.

I submit that to Mima right away.

I fax it to them.

They have it.

So the mayor and I are already on the same page, as Ann can attest to.

It happens all the time when we have something going on in the city.

We're in constant communications.

I think the problem with this last situation, everybody was overwhelmed, and that's what would happen.

And lessons learned, I think now we know that we have to be more on point with everything.

I just think being in the same room and just having that mandate— if it is what it is, if you're the leader of a department, right, and there's a state of emergency, you should be there.

So I think that maybe entertaining that as a mandate for the chiefs of our public safety agencies— not so much DCM has their own job that they do there, I'm talking about the public safety agencies that are going to be here, meet with MEMA, and obviously they would want want to speak to Mr. Hathaway, but he's a phone call away.

I'm speaking of the public safety chiefs in one room.

And that way— I was with Chief Fontes at the EMS building, and I was speaking to you, Chief Bacon, because you had fire trucks that were stuck.

I don't know where you were.

And that's not pointing you out by any means.

It's just that communication was all over the place.

I had spoken to Chief Aguiar many times during that storm.

It would have been so so much better if everybody was sitting together.

I remember you would call me for Rescue 1 on Alden Street, I believe it was.

Either that or Engine 5.

Engine 5 was stuck on Tobin.

And I had already gotten a phone call 15 minutes prior.

You know what I'm saying?

So we could cut down on the amount of phone calls and the amount of back and forth and kind of streamline it to in one room and one purpose.

So that's what I was looking for.

If that's possible, I would appreciate that.

Go ahead, Chief.

I think my suggestion would be, obviously he's put some good work into creating this manual, and when you disperse it to everyone, we should digest it.

I know I've worked with Rick before, and he's given me this because for accreditation reasons for the police department, there has to be a continuity of operations plan, which is addressed in there.

But then the internal governance of what happens during a hazard or a critical incident happens within our policy.

Policy.

So this is like the governance for the entire city, so that would speak to what you're looking for.

But I think we all should look, digest this, give some input, kind of do like a hot wash of it, walk through it, and then like a tabletop exercise, we understand what's going on, and then we do our internal thing, and then we know before we have a snowstorm and have to walk through it.

Like when we go into that, we already know that, all right, this is what happens.

You know, it's all ICS-based, so there's some free training out there through Homeland security that, you know, it's always good to get a refresher.

It's not the most invigorating thing to go through, but it goes through the steps so that way when we're doing it— Is that NIMS?

NIMS and then the ICS.

So right now for police in service, they're talking about ICS and critical incident response, so that's why it's kind of fresh in my mind.

I had my NIMS through you guys.

Great.

So I think that's something we should look at as part of mandatory training for department heads so they understand like the whole ICS system and you know, command control, who's in charge.

It's not— egos get pushed aside.

It's, this is what we're gonna do and we move forward.

Yeah, no way.

Getting back to the storm, right?

When the storm hit that day, I think Ann knows, I was talking to the mayor back and forth.

And I was already on the web EOC getting resources for EMS, National Guard, stuff such as this from my home office.

Not here, 'cause I couldn't get here.

I couldn't get out of my driveway.

My snow was like Everybody knows what happened, right?

So once we can get things moving is then we started, you know, getting things together and when we started coming down here.

And all the chiefs were here.

Chief Fontes, Chief Hall, myself, and Chief Bacon.

We were all here already when this thing started.

So it must— it may have been delayed a day to be here, but I think everybody was— knew their role.

Role as to what would happen, because I spoke to you a few times and I spoke to the chief and I, you know, so we knew.

Yeah, and that's interjecting again.

My issue isn't so much, and obviously everybody knows their roles, it's the kickoff.

Everybody just go and then do your roles.

You know, it's that initial communication and everybody get to one place and then you do your jobs.

Once the snow cleared, then we could get here.

That was the problem.

It was tough getting here.

That was the whole thing.

No, it was a storm like we've never seen before.

I think we were going in a bunch of different directions, though.

He had vehicles stuck.

You had vehicles stuck.

I had vehicles stuck.

We were all just trying to pull from the same resources.

And so it would have been nice if, you know, even during the height of the storm, if there was a point.

Yeah, like a point of contact.

Like a point of contact.

Yeah.

And that's what I'm looking for.

Here.

So if everybody was in— again, last time I'll say it— in one room, it just makes it much easier.

I did have a suggestion, like an informational board.

Like, I feel like an informational board, like a legislative informational board, even if you put together like a Teams account where everybody was on the same page, so that way when somebody reaches out to you and you're— they ask you a question, so-and-so so on such and such a street at this and such and such a place.

And you've— once you've made contact and closed it, then you could just mark it as closed, you know, so that the same, same information disseminates down to every chief or everybody who wants to look at it.

And Michael can look up and Andrew can look up to see, you know, maybe even a Teams meeting in the morning for legislative Teams meeting or something for a brief overview.

I don't know.

Something.

Somebody might be a little smarter at putting that together than me, but it does seem like a reasonable idea.

I think Chief Hawes is like, I have that job.

Thanks for that.

I think it's just a matter of everyone knowing the plan, right?

And then initiating that plan.

And it doesn't have to be, oh, do we really want to think we'd do it?

Let's just do it.

And then we can always— we can dismantle the EOC when it's proven.

I mean, we had that crazy rainstorm, what, a year ago in July where we We had thunder, lightning, wind, and the city was like a bunch of stuff, and we had special events planned for down on the waterfront.

Like, that's something we didn't expect it to be that bad, but then it would be a delayed initiation of the EOC.

I think the important thing is the hard work that the EMA director does in passing that out so that we can give some feedback, maybe addressing the concerns we have of centralized communication.

I know one of my biggest things is Tyler was the one that had access to send out the text message, or, you know, if you want alerts, sign up here.

But then there's like a gap there.

Like, we should be able to send that right from the EOC.

So like, if we want to get us— get information out quickly, and I think we recognized that when we were using the police department's Facebook page that had more followers, we're trying to get the reach out there.

So not only external communication but internal.

So I think that's a great idea of having like an internal— we'll have to look at that.

If Teams is the solution, I think you can do like a Teams chat, so that way at least we have things we can check off.

And I mean, it goes without saying, when we started using that cloud app, that's when we started to be able to check the boxes, and then people felt like we were actually making some progress.

And I think that's really the intention of this plan.

But you know, this is just a template, and every idea we could put into this book as well, you know, thoughts from the police side, fire side, EMS side, public works side, you know, we can implement this in here.

It's just— this is just This is just my thoughts of doing this for many years and picking information from the East End book.

I put this together.

But there's a lot of other stuff that we can put in here and omit, I mean, but it's a living document, once again, and we can change this and do anything we want with it.

But I just put it together so, you know, I even did, you know, the room, how the room's gonna be set up and so forth.

This way here we have the diagram.

This is where it's going to be and let's follow that diagram.

But that could be changed as well.

That was my thought of just doing with this stuff for many years.

And that's how we normally would do it.

Okay?

If there's one thing I don't doubt, it's your packets and your thumb drives.

Every time I come here, I got a packet and a thumb drive.

And they're always spot on.

So I trust that that is in immaculate order.

I do.

I'm looking forward to taking a look at it.

Deputy, do you have anything?

Yeah.

I mean, speak to what Chief already talked about.

I think what's important to make sure it's in these books is the criteria on which we're actually going to activate the EOC and making sure we're sticking to that criteria.

Even if it's preemptive, it's better to have it and then kind of disassemble it than to not activate it at all.

Speaking obviously to the snowstorm, obviously that was much bigger than we anticipated.

And the reason why people are having difficulty getting here is because by the time we decided we needed it, at that point time, it was too late.

If that was activated earlier in the process, it definitely would have helped with communication in that moment.

And then the other thing I would say, just obviously from my background, is it's important to have the book, it's important to know what's in the book, but it's also important to be able to quickly deploy that book.

So, having some type of training exercise that actually allows people to use what's in that book and come to the table and understand, you know, who's activating the COC, when this gets activated, who reports, what's getting done once it reports, what are the contacts, how are we getting this stuff together, and not just doing it in the state of an emergency, doing it in some type of organized method so that we know how to quickly deploy the stuff in that moment.

And to your question, Chief, it speaks all out in here.

So normally it's the EMA director that's in charge of the EOC, and it's the EMA director that gets everyone together through the mayor's office as well.

Because Anna and I dealt with this before.

This is not our first rodeo with this stuff.

We've dealt with this with Mayor Flanagan, with the EOC, getting that set up.

So we've been— she knows exactly how this works.

And I think that's one thing that's really important is for people to understand what the protocol is and who the lead is, especially in contact with the state, because there were many, many people who were trying to be very helpful from other levels, making phone calls on the city's behalf.

And you had equipment that you didn't know was coming because it wasn't going through the proper channel.

So, I mean, before— well before that storm, I mean, we were all in contact with each other.

And one of the issues becomes you can have 15 phone lines, but if you don't have 15 people who are answering those phone lines, especially when it comes to like dispatching plows and things like that, because we kind of take a hands-off approach.

We tell people, be patient.

They, you know, they plow the main roads first, they plow the emergency routes first, they do this, they do that.

But then you start having a lot of people taking calls and every call becomes a priority.

So we're jamming up, you know, the police chief's phone, the fire chief's phone, the DCM director's phone and calling all different people and they're all going to like the same place.

So it's kind of— and that's why like it's better to have 2 people answering a phone if people have to leave a message or something than to talk to people who at the end don't really know how to dispatch.

So I was obviously here for the blizzard and so were you.

We were both here and you answered a lot of phone calls.

Now why don't we have other people to answer.

Well, one thing is a lot of these people, I mean, have not been involved in like snowplowing operations before.

Some live out of town.

And then to try to get here and how long, like, we don't— it's got to be a big emergency.

So I think to have this, I think something like the— there should be something.

And if it's not already, Chief, I think it should be an EMT or somebody that can come in.

And I don't like that people are going to call and they'll have to leave a message during an emergency.

If we had a few people answering the phone that were mandated to come in along with this protocol, other city employees, I don't care if they're clerks, dispatchers, whatever the case may be.

I know there's union issues there, but it would be a good thing to reach out to a few civilian hands during a state of emergency and have them come in to field the phone calls?

Because not for nothing, you're the interim city administrator.

You have a lot of stuff to do during— No, but we do have that.

They're just at different— like, Chris's whole operation.

So I did— I worked while I was at DCM for the storm before, and 2 clerks were there to answer the plow calls.

I'm talking about everything else.

That came in during that blizzard.

You know what I'm saying?

Well, you know, I think also that the chiefs that are here know once we got a handle on it, we had it under control and we were in the right direction.

Because we had the state here, we had everyone here with us.

We had a representative from MEMA here.

Matthew was here from MEMA.

They sent him down to help us with the EOC.

So once we got everything in place, I think everything went smoothly.

But of course, there's a few monkey wrenches in there that we have to work work on, right?

And that's what we're here for, to work on it, to resolve those issues.

It was the danger zone though, it was during the active blizzard where everybody— he went to— where'd you go?

He got stuck in Somerset.

He went over the bridge to go to an emergency and he was heading in that direction.

He went to an auto accident and once he got there, the off-ramps and on-ramps were unplowed.

Impossible to get back.

It was impossible to get back.

And so I feel like during that time frame, the other thing I noticed Chief Ward, is that we probably could have benefited from a priority dispatch standpoint for medical emergencies so that way we could have planned that a little bit better.

We don't normally do that.

It's like you call first, you get an ambulance first, you know.

So there are some things that we learned on the back end too.

But I think it was during the height of the storm was the scariest part for us and for everybody, I'm sure.

It was a learning experience for all of us.

That's for Yeah, no, it was, it was definitely one for the, for the record books, that's for sure.

You have anything, counsel?

I don't think so.

All right.

With that being said, maybe motion to table.

So made.

Second.

Motion to table has been made and seconded.

All those in favor?

Aye.

No nays.

Thank you very much.

Motion to lift item 5 from the table.

Motion to lift item 5 has been made and seconded.

All those in favor?

Aye.

Item number 5, resolution convene with quarterly— convene quarterly with police chief, fire chief, and chief of EMS for updates.

This was tabled in June on the 16th, May 26th.

Oh, is that right?

You got somewhere to be?

No, I'll stay.

You can, you don't have to if you don't want to.

So these are good, and I'm going to— yeah, just don't worry about that.

No worries.

I'm going to start with Chief Hoare.

I know you had a large operation roughly a few weeks ago now in the Corky Row area, 40 arrests.

Can you just give us a breakdown of that?

Yes, obviously we were getting a lot We've had a lot of complaints.

I think it goes back to the Serta station, and we were having that as a problem, and then it kind of was expanding in that neighborhood.

We had a shooting that occurred.

We had an actual victim of the shooting.

Some of the shootings we've had throughout the summer have been not necessarily victimless, but more property damage and evidence collected of a shooting happening.

In that particular case, we did have a victim.

So we worked with our Special Operations Investigation Bureau, our senior leadership in the building came up with the operation Restore the Row.

And it was a collective effort of basically going out there and going after targeted areas where we knew crime was.

So the McCluskey Apartments area, we worked with the Housing Authority as well.

They've been an excellent partner in all of this because they want to make sure, you know, people there feel safe.

We were getting some intelligence there, and it still exists, that, you know, there not feeling safe, and that's the biggest issue, you know, the fear of crime.

So I think we had a great team put together, led by our senior leadership.

Captain Billy Platt did an excellent job of the operations there, not only within our building but with other federal agencies and state agencies.

So it was quite the operation.

As you saw, we had not only warrant sweeps going on, we had search warrant executions going on, we had drug investigations that were tied into this.

So we basically put everything on the front burner and went in and did what we did that night.

And I think what it ended up doing is breaking a couple cases open where we actually were able to solve some of the cases that were open as it was related to shootings.

And I think it was basically by the show of force that we had there and that we were intercepting and taking off the streets some of the most dangerous people that were there, and then the cooperation started happening.

From some of the people that were witnesses to those crimes, which was able— which is a cool thing to see, and was able to spear off with, you know, we made a capture of a person that was involved in a shooting 2 weeks prior to that.

So it was a very successful operation.

It will continue.

I know we've had some offline conversation, and I spoke with the mayor's office on this.

The accountability lies with those that are committing crimes, but also the accountability is going to be held to the property owners.

So we've had a nuisance property ordinance that's been loosely enforced here and there.

I'm looking at a collective effort with code enforcement, with building inspector.

I've had conversations with both Faust and Glenn regarding what we can do to kind of hold the landlords accountable.

I'm developing right now a template, so basically if we do have some type of drug investigation where, you know, a 3-tenement home or a multifamily home or a single-family home that's rented out, that's not owner-occupied, that we have a criminal investigation into and as a result of an arrest or there's a serious incident, that landlord is going to get a letter from me, from my office, putting them on notice that, hey, this has occurred here and there's some accountability to what they need to do there.

Because I think it's not fair to the people that care about the properties that they live in, whether they own it or they're renting, to have to deal with this type of this type of stuff right next door.

And I think we've taken a fierce effort to address those.

We're going to need some time.

It doesn't happen overnight.

But I think holding people accountable from the landlord and property ownership side, ultimately, you know, the broken windows theory, holding them accountable to fix the broken windows, to take pride in the ownership and helping us be a partner, and then the code enforcement side as well.

Doing that is like a multifaceted effort.

So I'm working on some training for our guys to partner with the fire department as well.

So if we're in a building and we see that there's, you know, you got fire alarms nonexistent, you just see the wires hanging down from the top, make a phone call to the fire department.

They make the call, and guess what?

Now you're putting the pinch on the property owner because that's a problem lying in wait on multiple levels.

Never mind the crime that occurred in there or whatever we're investigating from the police side.

That's a fire hazard.

That's death that could potentially be happening.

Huge liability.

So accountability has to happen.

And then, you know, if we have to go down the fine route, then we do.

I know the city is looking for revenue sources, and that's a way we can have revenue sources while holding people accountable.

Okay.

Councilor Raposo?

Yeah, so related but unrelated.

So we're talking about the nuisance ordinance, and I think as the chairman of ordinance, I have to ask this question.

My personal opinion is that the nuisance ordinance is too weak.

As far as, you know, I think you mentioned— what did you say, it was loosely enforced?

So it's— yes.

So it's basically, I think it's a training gap on our side and working with Corporation Counsel's Office on, you know, where we go with that and putting people on notice.

But it could be freshened up and the fines could be stiffened.

Yeah, because I think, you know, when I look at what the definition of a nuisance ordinance what a nuisance property is in the ordinances, it is, I think, very vague in the sense of what can fall under that classification.

So, I think it needs to actually be strengthened.

And I think to the Chief's point, not necessarily in the sense— the fines, when you— I guess when you hit the pocket in this sense, there's going to be situations where clearly it's classified as nuisance situation, and there needs to be a fine attached to it to get it remedied.

Because if not, If there's no penalty to the crime or the violation, it just remains.

And I can think of one particular situation I've been talking to administration about that clearly falls under nuisance ordinance, but the mechanism is weak in order to get it to move.

Because again, you have a situation where it's a landlord who doesn't live in the city, they live outside of the city.

You know, you have a representative who lives there, but again, as the representative, not the property owner.

How do you get these situations rectified?

Now, to Faust's credit, you know, I've been touching base with him.

He's been great with it.

But I almost would argue that as an ordinance committee, as a council, we should probably look at that ordinance to strengthen it with Corporation Counsel to, um, to get— give them more tools to then rectify these issues, um, quicker.

So I'll make a motion after on that, but I just wanted to bring that to your, you know, everybody's attention.

Attention at this point.

I'll yield for now.

I think, um, I know in my upcoming Health and Environmental Affairs we'll be talking about nuisance properties and things like that, so maybe it's a discussion we can have too and potentially make recommendations to the Ordinance Committee based on that discussion, which will have the building inspector, code enforcement, and others at the table.

So just for clarification, the ordinance itself, there is no penalty attached to the ordinance?

There is.

It's just, it's, it's not a significant fine in my opinion.

Yeah, it's not a significant monetary fine.

And I think to what the councilor was spelling out, it's vague in a sense where the normal individual in their lifespan will only call 911 for a significant emergency, whether you're having a life or death situation or a significant emergency.

A nuisance property is something where neighbors are calling us because the property is a nuisance.

Because there's disorderly conduct going on outside, there's public drinking going on, there are people that are just being loud and causing these quality of life concerns.

And it's unique because I think we need to take a look at it from a business standpoint too, because I know CERTA was an issue for a while.

They got their private security.

The call volume to them has gone significantly down.

So I think working in partnership— I know that's a pseudo-city agency, the mayor sits on that board.

Or I think Ann does.

Essentially, we work together.

They had a gap there with a change in their personnel for security.

It's much better.

But I think the surrounding area there, we've gotten some complaints from Borden Place West and some homeless activity over there.

So the nuisance property really comes down to people that are living in a house that are causing quality of life concerns for the neighbors behind them, whether it's noise complaints, whether it's, you know, calls outside of the norm.

So like, you're not going to get hit for being a nuisance property because your uncle lives with you and is on an end-of-life plan, and you had to call 911 3 times because he had to be transported to hospital over the last 3 weeks.

Those don't count.

It's more so the nuisance, and it's spelled out in the, in the ordinance that way.

I think the fine needs to be elevated, because when you get that letter in the mail, it should be kind of like a whoa, You know, what is this?

But also informing the public.

I think it's great to have the ordinance, but you have to understand that when did they know about that ordinance?

Knowing it and then, you know, intentionally violating it, but also holding their tenants.

So you have a lot of properties that are getting revitalized right now in the city and, you know, market rate housing, people are renovating things left and right.

The tenants need to know.

That should be part— if I was a landlord, that's what I would be doing.

Like, hey, this is what I'm responsible to hold you accountable for.

Because if you don't follow the rules, then I'm going to get hit in the pocket, and then it's a trickle-down effect.

Because it's going to put a lot of— it puts a lot of stress on all of our agencies, especially even nuisances where it's a property that's not kept and you're having false alarms.

We've had that happen in a property in the Flint area.

There was one down on Bank Street.

The fire department was there almost every single day for a phantom fire alarm.

We keep going to that call over and over again.

There's no consequence to the landlord.

What's the follow-up there?

So I think it's just putting some systems in place so that we can have the follow-up for accountability on multiple facets, not just from the police side, but for all services.

Agreed.

Do you have anything else, Chief?

No, I just wanted to say that with the operation that we had that you said, Restore the Row, I have to give credit to our agency.

As of today, we did 63 special events in the city.

A special event would be one at the waterfront, the gates of the city.

63 special events that required police there.

43 processions that we handled, whether that be religious processions, whether it be for other purposes.

Our guys and girls went above and beyond.

And we're still able to put out a product I think that was excellent this year.

And we're not done, but I just want to feature that, that we were able to not only do what's expected of us, but we dug a little bit deeper and we went a little bit more, and that's expected from us.

I know, you know, you guys don't just want marginal.

We want to make a difference.

But we are moving that needle.

Our crime stats are still trending in a direction where they're down about 7% overall.

So that's a good thing.

And then we're still hiring.

So I've got about 26, 27 people in the process of being hired over the next several months.

We're looking to get that number up around the 230 mark, 235 mark.

We're dipping into that COPS grant that we talked about a few months ago.

So things are moving in a good direction.

Obviously, with that said, we just need some time and we'll get there.

I appreciate you.

Chief Bacon.

Yeah, so while we're talking about hiring, we have 10 new hires that are in the works right now.

As it looks currently today, we're going to have 5 starting EMT in this classroom with Fall River— through Fall River EMS on October 5th or 6th, that week.

And then they'll start the academy immediately after, and then we'll have 5 more starting at the beginning of 2027 in the academy.

A limited space in the academy.

So we got— we talked— I sent you a text the other day about our new Engine 9 that came in.

The crews are currently training on that, and we have the goal of putting it in full service next week sometime.

I'll be planning an in-service ceremony and getting the word out to everybody.

We'll do that at the Flint Station prior to its first shift in service.

On Unfortunately, Ladder 4, which we ordered the same day as Engine 9 in 2024, beginning of 2024, we just found out that Spartan has a major backup and delay at their plant in Pennsylvania.

There are still 5 trucks ahead of that truck.

Our cab and chassis have been there for almost a year waiting to begin the build.

So I have the— one of the heads of Spartan Fire Apparatus is going to come here to meet with me, with the salesman, and with my leadership team to provide some answers.

And I've asked for proof of the 5 trucks ahead of us were ordered before us.

We prepaid on those to save a significant amount of money.

I want to ensure that they're not just kicking us to the side because we don't owe them any money and they need capital, so they're going to finish other people's trucks first.

That's one of my big concerns.

They did provide us with a owner.

It's a truck that's parked outside right now that we're beginning training on this week to be our spare ladder truck.

So we'll have that truck until Ladder 4 comes in.

It does not have the capability of Ladder 4.

It is 20 years old, but it will help us in the meantime when we have a ladder truck down.

I think the last thing is one of the things that we talk about often is stations and facilities.

I received a proposal from the consultant who did our staffing study to do a station location study.

His price was much higher than I anticipated.

So I've reached out to several fire chiefs in the area who have done similar studies to find out who did theirs and what the pricing kind of looked like for that.

But I also reached out to the state, I think it was last week or the week before, I was told that DOT is going to be responsible for a lot of the planning for the Route 79 corridor, for the development down there.

So I reached out to the project coordinator through DOT and told him that we were interested in at least kicking the tires on a station going down there and how we might be able to figure that into the master plan.

So once I hear back from him, my plan is to have a meeting with the administration and the EMS chief.

I don't know if there's an interest in having a police substation down there, some space down there for when they do waterfront events and things.

So I think that we could really do a good job of putting a public safety presence down in that new development down there.

And lastly, I'm meeting with facilities next week.

One of the things we're talking about is improvements to the Flint Station and whether we need to look into putting an addition on Stanley Street or replacing it in total.

So I'm trying to move forward to try to make our facilities better in the long term.

And I know they're all projects that probably won't see the light of day till I'm gone, but we need to get the ball rolling now, otherwise they'll never see the light of day.

I agree.

Is that it, Chief?

Yeah.

Thank you very much.

Councilor Fozzo.

Thank you, Mr.

Chair.

To the Fire Chief, I want to make a comment and then a question.

So you had sent to me that video that was produced actually right outside side here of the training, you know, the Gabriel House post-training and the effect on fire.

So I want to first say it was excellent.

It was very eye-opening to actually see, you know, as a person who didn't experience it, how quick a suppression system can take it out and what happens when a suppression system doesn't exist.

So I appreciate you sending that, and I think, you know, unfortunately in tragedy, there's always things we learn from.

And that was an eye-opening experience.

So I thank you for sending that to me and that being a public thing because it's eye-opening for everybody to watch.

And I would encourage if there's some way we could actually facilitate that out publicly a little bit more, I think it would be eye-opening for the public to see as well.

It's on the front page of the city's website.

If you scroll through the— it was the first thing that came up on the city's website, but if you scroll through that front page, there's a link to it right on there.

And I'm glad you brought that up because I did want to mention that.

That District Chief Sean Flannery and Captain Josh Hetzler spearheaded that.

Captain Hetzler saw it through.

The people we worked with at NFSA contacted me last week to let me know that they have never seen legislation be passed this quickly.

As of January 1st, 2027, a year and a half after the Gabriel House fire, every sprinkler head in Massachusetts will need to be checked to make sure that it's not on a recalled sprinkler list.

This gentleman from NFSA has been a fire chief, he's been a consultant, he's been all around the country, and he said it was the pride of his career to work with the Fall River Fire Department and see change happen this quickly.

And I didn't take that lightly, and I don't take credit for that.

That's Josh Hetzler, his tenacity, Sean Flannery.

They spent a lot a lot of time lobbying the NFSA because we knew— they identified them not only as an agency that if they supported us could push this through quicker, but if they didn't support it could sink it quickly.

So they built that bridge.

They fostered a relationship that you saw the results of here, but we'll also see the results— you won't see the results of the lives saved by it, which is always the tragedy in fire prevention.

It's the toughest thing for me to get through to the firefighters that work in fire prevention is when a firefighter goes to a house fire and pulls somebody out, they get that immediate satisfaction of saving a life.

Fire prevention saves thousands of lives a year but never get that feeling that they did it.

They just get the next complaint.

I appreciate you bringing that up.

I was moved by that video.

It's not often in your fire career you go to a scene where a sprinkler puts out a fire.

But legitimately in that room, and the building's still out there, if that first fire, the sprinkler went off in 80 seconds, the temperature never got above 200 degrees from 5 feet down in the room, never got above 80 degrees in the hallway with the door open.

If you were standing in that room not looking at the chair, you didn't even know there was a fire in the room.

It's much more often as firefighters we go into the after scene from the the non-sprinkler, right?

When you look and said that whole room was devastated.

So it was, it was a moment when I watched it at home with my wife for the first time.

Believe it or not, I know you know me, I get a little emotional, right?

Like one sprinkler head would have made that difference.

So I encourage— I, I appreciate you bringing it up, and I encourage people to look at the— to watch the video.

It was— they did a really— they put a lot of money into the production, and it shows.

Yeah, that's— and it's great.

It's, uh, it's credit to your agency and credit to your people.

So kudos to all of you.

Um, the last question I have, and we've been talking about it, um, where do we stand on the, on the, uh, replacement of, uh, the PFAS-free equipment?

Any new updates since we've last spoken?

Yeah, so, um, so we've selected Morning Pride as the, uh, manufacturer to order our first, uh, 37— I think we're going to be up to 80, 85 sets this year.

We're waiting to hear from the AFG grant, but I have a good feeling that that will be successful.

And once we get that, we'll have 86 sets replaced of PFAS-free gear with the Morning Pride.

We've got it out on 2 of our firefighters who also tested the previous 2 sets, and we've gotten very positive reviews on this as far as breathability, lightweight.

I know one of the things we thought about before the meeting was the non-breathability is that first generation of gear and not trading cancer for heat-related acute symptoms.

So I think I'm confident that we're making a good decision with this Morning Pride.

We'll give it 6 months to a year once we get it to really confirm the durability of it, and then we'll move forward with ordering the rest.

Excellent.

Thank you, Chief.

I yield.

Council, is that it, Chief?

That's all I got.

Fantastic.

Thank you.

Chief Agate, right now I'm updating all my evacuation plans, about 122 of them, um, sending out to the schools.

Andrew, did you get mine?

Yes, sir.

Okay, it's on my desk ready, ready to send back to you.

Thank you.

So, so, um, all the schools, the updates, all the schools that I have to— that's part of the ESIP plan as well.

I have to put that into the ESIP plan, update all that stuff.

About 122, I probably received about 50 back already.

And it's a process.

Send out the questionnaire form that's in the back, and I just put everything into the ESF plan.

And some of the— when they come back to high-rise buildings, nursing homes, I have a section there for handicap disability, and I pass it on to fire prevention, to Captain Hetzler, so he has a list of all the people in the high-rises who are going to need assistance right away.

So, you know, we don't want that to happen at the Gabriel House Fire any longer.

So there's a list of people with their rooms, their disability— sight, walking impaired.

So every time I get those back, I hand them over to Captain Hetzel.

Matter of fact, I gave him one yesterday.

So it's an asset to the fire department as well, getting all this stuff back.

Excellent.

Thank you.

Chief Fons.

I would like to mirror Chief Ward's statement of EMS was about at about 42 events this summer between all the festivals and stuff, and they really stepped up.

And it was pretty warm too this summer.

One of our struggles has been we had 3 ambulances in a 6-month period that have gotten hit.

One was a wrong-way driver on High Street coming up.

He was speeding.

One crossed over Plymouth Avenue and took out our squad on the apron of the Candae Station, and another truck was taken off— taken out, the front end was taken out in the front of the Candae Station.

So we've been operating out of spares, which has been a challenge, but we seem to be moving in the right direction.

Seems to be getting answers on whether the trucks are repairable or not seems to be the struggle, but But we're starting to work with the law department to see if we could speed up that process.

We're going to have a planning meeting internally with EMS to try to see— I'd like to have my crews and everybody at the table to try to see what things EMS could have used in the snow that we didn't have.

Like we had talked about the ski patrol toboggans, like, are there things that we can do to try to make things a little bit easier should we get into that situation again.

I think that now's the time to talk about it before the first slate falls.

So we are going to start having some of those conversations.

But I think pretty much that's where we are.

The one thing I have is, so obviously we got that emergency operations trailer done in record, record time.

And there was no plan for the events coming up.

There was nothing nothing written down because everything was just so fast in the process.

So going into next spring, and we'll have meetings before then, but I'll throw it out there now, maybe start to come up with a list of maybe, you know, the events that we know are definitely going to happen for next year and get that EUC on the, you know, have it go to each event, but we'll have a structured list as to who's bringing it and, and whatnot.

And The fact that it didn't get to some events this year again is nobody's fault because I was not expecting it to be done as quickly as it was.

I think we put the telescoping lights, telescoping, you know, the lights that go up and down.

I think those are in our capital plan, so we could probably do that maybe early in the spring, probably once the weather starts to change.

And I, we probably should weatherize it at some point and clean all the stuff out of there.

But it has come in handy, especially some of the events.

4th of July was really hot, so we were able to be able to use it.

That was the other thing I wanted to talk to the grant writer too about, seeing if we could get something that we had discussed, like a mobile command center rather than what we have.

So I'll ask her about that too, and the AEDs.

Yeah, the only— the command post at the police station Department has, the mobile one, it's aging.

I think Chief Racine purchased it, so that gives you how old that is.

It's still equipped well, but for us, if there's like a homicide or a significant incident where it's not going to be a special event but it's going to be a prolonged investigation, deploying that trailer is not the, the best option.

So we had spoken about getting a mobile command post that could be driven somewhere for a myriad of different reasons, you know.

Gabriel House obviously is a major incident, but major fires get it there.

It can be used by all 3 or all 4 agencies in the city so that we can— I know the mayor is pro that idea as well, because when I sat with him for the first time about this, he said, well, I'd much prefer a mobile command center.

And obviously we got this done for very short money.

It was all done in-house.

So it's good for now, but I am looking forward to entertaining that conversation just because it is something that we could use in a city our size.

And, you know, it's something that we could definitely benefit from.

So nothing else?

Go ahead, Councilor.

Just 2 quick questions to Chief Fontes.

When you mentioned the 3 ambulances that were hit, I'm assuming those were not fault on our end?

None of them were our fault.

So 2 of them were— one was altered, one was intoxicated, and the other one took— left the scene and the police were able to locate them.

Okay, so I'm assuming at some point, if they're totaled or not, there's going to be some sort of reimbursement through insurance to cover this?

I have one truck that's going to take 9 months.

They have to— they had to put a new— had a new cabin chassis.

They have to pull the box off, put the new cabin chassis, and put the box back on.

That truck will be gone for about 9 months.

Scout's getting antsy.

That's actually all I had, so I yield.

Thank you.

Anything else, Counselor?

Anything else?

I just wanted to add, obviously, the Gabriel House just reminded me— I just got the correspondence late last week— but the officers involved in the Gabriel House that were there at first are being honored by the state for the Hannah Award, which is the highest award for bravery.

That'll be a— I'll send an email to the council and the mayor in October.

And the Massachusetts Police Association is also recognizing all those officers for the Medal of Valor.

It's a little delayed because of the award cycle, but I got that correspondence last week.

Fantastic.

Congratulations.

Yeah, did you have— you said you might have a motion, Councilor.

You said that earlier.

I just don't want to— No, no, I don't.

Not right now, I don't.

Okay.

Motion to table.

Yeah, motion to table has been made.

Seconded.

All those in favor?

Aye.

Second.

Motion to adjourn has been made and seconded.

All those in favor?

Aye.

Aye.

No nays.

Have a good night, everybody.