Doug Niemynski (EMS Chief), Michael Freeman (GIS/Statistician), myself, and our consulting team had a face-to-face meeting last Tuesday with the EMS Department of Phoenix regarding the CON application. We have been back and forth with them via emails and letters for 14 months. Our consultants also had numerous phone conversations with them.

After the Secretariat’s latest letter, it was decided that the best course of action would be to request a face-to-face meeting. Since many of their questions were directly related to the development of GIS mapping and response times, it felt best to include Michael as well.

The Secretariat included GIS stakeholders in the meetings, which made the job much easier. I don’t know if you know this, but the GIS/statistician is like her IT guy and speaks a different language that’s hard to understand for non-IT guys. Ultimately, the GIS mapping should be able to be replicated and validated by her GIS person, and the rest of us should fully understand the methodology. Michael and his GIS guys in the office were able to work through the challenges and arrive at a solution. This is a big step as it may take your application off.

In addition, we’ve broken down one of the biggest pain points of mapping. When I submitted my application and subsequent map, I submitted using the CAFMA jurisdiction. The Department should be able to verify the boundaries through a third party such as the Yavapai County GIS.

The geographic boundaries of fire districts are drawn using boundaries as defined tax jurisdictions. CAFMA is not a tax authority, so there is no standalone his CAFMA jurisdictional boundary that can be replicated in any system. To that end, it was necessary to provide jurisdictional boundaries for CVFD, jurisdictional boundaries for CYFD, and circle those boundaries to represent CAFMA CON. Once that was clarified, things started to go well.

We had a few other conversations, which I won’t go into here, but suffice it to say the meeting went very well. Responses to their final letter, including everything discussed on Tuesday, must be submitted by January 20th. If all goes well, our application should, hopefully, be able to proceed to potential public hearings in the next few months.

As some of you may know, over the summer, the Feddema Chief worked with his staff on the latest review with ISO. I received an updated ISO number last week. Unfortunately, the ISO rating has gone up. Previously rated 3/4/10, now rated 4/10.

There are three specific areas where we have lost an important point. First, there are not enough fire hydrants. It’s out of our hands. Both 2 and 3 are related to staffing and deployment. That is, it is understaffed and unable to produce an effective fire brigade on site that meets even her minimal NFPA standards.

surprised? No. We’ve been saying the data shows that we need to increase our capacity to respond. This includes adding new engines and looking for other opportunities to increase the system’s resources outside of additional engines. For example, low-visibility units with Firefighters/Medics and/or Firefighters/EMTs can respond to critical events with engines and are included as part of the effective force. Basically, you need more responders in the field in less time.

As I mentioned earlier, the staff is working on plans to increase headcount in the operational and non-operational divisions over the next three to five years, preferably two years. In our opinion, we need at least 20 additional firefighters (new titles). This will improve the staffing of the current equipment, plus he will add a 24 hour engine.

Ultimately, we want to have a few stations with at least four players. It has not yet been decided which stations he will or should be manned by more than four people. At the same time, as development progresses, we need to add more stations to meet demand. Given current funding limitations, staffing and adding stations to meet future demand remains a challenge.

I hope that the upcoming strategic planning and certification process will help provide the roadmap we need to move forward. We share not-so-good news about and current staffing needs. We also enlisted their help in planning our solution through our strategic planning process. can do.

Unfortunately, someone (me) was out of the office, delaying the staff meeting needed to develop a staffing plan. I hope to see you next Monday or Tuesday to get things sorted, unfortunately she is scheduled to have surgery Wednesday morning in Phoenix to remove a disc between her L3/L4 and fuse her vertebrae.

Once the staff has drafted the plan, we will ask Vice President Sean Jones for a special L/M meeting. This will allow the Union Electronic Board to provide some information before submitting the draft to the board. Nothing that costs money is decided until the board approves the budget. That said, they can approve concepts that allow more specific plans to be made, including recruitment timeframes and academies.

Senior staff and various variations of E-Board these days have informal conversations about staffing plans. So far everyone seems to be on the same page. This means we need more people.

There are a lot of moving parts as the year begins and we work towards creating budgets and future staffing plans. It should be a good time.

CAFMA has introduced the CAFMA Connect Podcast! Get to know your staff and stay connected with your local fire department. Subscribe to the podcast on our YouTube channel. www.youtube.com/channel/UCshgJvK9iKOILA-Z3TEDvVQ.

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