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HomeMy WebLinkAboutFire Dept, FY 2014-15 DEPARTMENTAL BUDGET REVIEWS 4/8/2014 DEPARTMENTAL BUDGET REVIEWS 2014-15 FIRE DEPARTMENT April 8, 2014 Fire Department (1m) Page 1 The departmental budget review reconvened on April 8, 2014 at 9:04 a.m., and proceeded as follows: Fire Department Honorable Mason K. Chock, Sr. Honorable Gary L. Hooser Honorable Ross Kagawa Honorable Mel Rapozo (present at 10:07 a.m.) Honorable JoAnn A. Yukimura Honorable Jay Furfaro, Council Chair Excused: Honorable Tim Bynum Chair Furfaro: Aloha, and good morning. I would like to call the budgetary meetings back from recess and I would like to also acknowledge that today is April 8, 2014 but I am going to change our format a little bit this morning. Many of you folks are aware that over the last thirty-six (36) hours or so our fire department has been extremely busy with other public safety officials and in fact I think the most recent count that I have is a total of about one hundred sixty-one (161) people that received assistance under the high surf and flood warnings that were along the Na Pali Coast. I want to let you know that I talked to the Chief this morning and I will be asking him when he returns from his travel this week to revisit this in a committee that I am going to ask Mr. Rapozo to head up as the Chairman of Public Safety and I am going to assign Vice Chair Chock to that task force as well. Certainly, his experience as well with public safety will be one that will contribute some evaluation time for the activities. I think along the line, Chief, I would like to ask to have someone in from Civil Defense and someone in from the Police Department and Water Safety as well, but if you could work with Mr. Rapozo. On that note, I would like to call you up today so that you can give us a quick overview and more importantly acknowledge the fine men and women of your department and the County of Kaua`i for their magnificent assistance yesterday but while it is fresh we do want to set up this special task force to make an evaluation and everything with you. So, chief, the rules are suspended. Again, I want to give you the floor and I want to applaud everyone that worked so hard along the Na Pali yesterday and kept those activities to a minimum and any potential tragedy was well managed and good oversight. The floor is yours Chief. Thank you. There being no objections, the rules were suspended. ROBERT WESTERMAN, Fire Chief: I am very proud to be the Fire Chief for this county fire department. What I have asked the Chair to allow me to do this morning, as we have a small video presentation of the incident and it involves one of the family members that was up in Kalakau, in the valley that got stuck behind the raging waters and made the brave attempt to make it across and they did not make it across. The lucky end of this story is with the crew sitting behind me we were able to rescue that young boy that you see up there today, so Scott if you would play that for us please. (Video from Fire Chief Westerman played) Mr. Westerman: Thank you, Chair. I would like to thank that crew. They are behind me today, Captain Tamura, Operator Doo, Rescue Specialist Aaron Hawthorne, Rescue Specialist Adam Hussey and the Pilot Cliff Cates. The Deputy tells me that timing is everything. So I think this was good or bad timing. As I had discussed with April 8, 2014 Fire Department (im) Page 2 the Chair and Vice Chair earlier and I was not even going to be here today because as part of our secession planning the Deputy is doing the budget process this year. As I joked with the Chair this morning we are throwing him to the wolves but I think he can do a very good job of handling it but this opportunity came up for me to publicly thank the men and women of the Kaua`i Fire Department and also involved with that were the Station 1 crew. That was who you saw driving out off the red anchoring crews. They were there both days. Organizing all of the people that were coming out as you saw is a pretty herculean effort to get all of those people out in the two (2) days we got them out. We also left, if I am not mistaken Aaron and Adam both on Sunday night, they stayed there at night with the folks that were left behind so they do not feel like they are left behind. Again, I want to thank you for your support and I am going to turn it over to the Deputy. Chair Furfaro: If you want to hold on Chief so I can see if some of the Members have a few questions regarding the rescue but again I am going to set up a task force that will evaluate this, headed by Mr. Rapozo and Vice Chair Chock. JoAnn you have the floor. Ms. Yukimura: Chief, it is just a so moving to hear the story and I am wondering if you could individually have them stand as you name them? Mr. Westerman: Sure. Deputy Tamura, Rescue Specialist Adam Hussey, Rescue Specialist Aaron Hawthorne, the pilot on duty that day, Cliff Cates. Chair Furfaro: Any other questions for the Chief at this point? Chief, I just want to say that all of your people make us very proud. I think you could really see the emotion in that gentleman's face when it came to the potential of him losing his family or part of his family and the response we had from the fine team that you had out there, I think it was also just one of those things that we need to evaluate and find out what do we do if young families go into the valley. What do we do when there is a flood watch? What do we do when there is high surf and people have to sleep overnight on the beach and do some evaluation. Now, first blush evaluation here of some of the immediate cost and staffing but at the end of the day it is not about measuring what we spent to achieve that success. But it is business as well and we need to have an evaluation. My gratitude goes out to the entire men and women of the Fire Department and your helicopter rescue team and our water safety people. Anything else for the Chief here? Chief, thank you very much. Thank you very much. Mr. Westerman: Thank you, Chair, Chair Furfaro: We will look back for a task force report sometime in a few months. Deputy Chief, first of all I want you to know that there is no reference in my name to wolfgang or anything of that nature. He is throwing you to the wolves, is that what he said? This is all part of taking a leadership role in the Fire Department as the Chief said and part of his continuity plan. Welcome this morning. JOHN BLALOCK, Deputy Fire Chief: Thank you, Chair, and Councilmembers. I appreciate this opportunity to be in front of you. Again, thank you for the words coming from your side and again I really want to have our men be and pilots (inaudible) to the credit goes and I think it is the whole department that works together to achieve these kinds of successes and it is through just the training that we have. The crew integrity, the pilot and crew integrity is really essential that we can come through and pull off something like this. So, thank you again for those words. April 8, 2014 Fire Department (lm) Page 3 Chair Furfaro: I want to make sure...my agenda for the day actually says that you do not have an overall power point for us and you will call up kind of a division heads through a period of your agenda and is there a power point? Mr. Blalock: Scott, do you have the one power point that we can pull up? What we were looking at doing this time around, Chair, is that just due to we were looking at last year's budget as compared to this year and there was not much changes so what I am going to do is a quick overview, hit some highlights and as you see questions that pertain to a certain bureau I will have them come up and answer those questions if that is okay. Chair Furfaro: Okay, it is your call Chief. Mr. Blalock: Thank you. Okay, overall again this is our mission. The mission of the Kaua`i Fire Department is to protect and preserve life, property, and the environment of Kaua`i County from fires and all types of life threatening emergencies. To minimize fire losses and responses; to be prepared for emergencies; and to efficiently respond to all emergencies through the reinforcement of prevention and training programs. It is also our mission to provide a comprehensive ocean safety and lifeguard program for the island of Kaua`i that includes prevention, response, rescue and public education components. And again this is who we are. It is really a...you will see a reoccurring theme about risk management, whether it is community risk management or risk management within our department itself. Hang on, Chair, let me pull up another power point. Chair Furfaro: Okay. Mr. Blalock: As we are looking for the power point that we presented here let me just go over some of the Fire Department objectives and again, for us it is doing the right thing, knowing our customers, basing all decisions on supporting the customers, be fiscal in all decisions, be honest in our response, provide mutual aid to our neighbors at the Lihu`e Airport and the Pacific Missile Range Facility (PMRF), responding to all calls for assistance without delays, provide for and attend training events and mutual aids with partners. Chair, can I have a short break, Chair? Chair Furfaro: Sure. BC, we are going to take a short break here. There being no objections, the Council recessed at 9:21 a.m. The meeting was called back to order at 9:27 a.m., and proceeded as follows: Chair Furfaro: We are back in session. Deputy Chief, I think we have updated your power point so... Mr. Blalock: Yes, I will take a mulligan on that one. First of all, again you always like to highlight our achievements and successes that we had in our past year and probably a lot of credit is due to our grants committee and for writing and securing grants. If you see the chart there is one trend you can kind of look at, grant moneys are getting harder and harder to come by. As we continue to apply for grants and write applications that can be accepted, everybody is taking a bigger slice of the pie and the pie is smaller. That is kind of what this is showing but again we continue to do that and we have been very successful in writing our grants. I guess Chief put a plug for me too. April 8, 2014 Fire Department (lm) Page 4 Completing the Executive Fire Officer (EFO) program at the National Fire Academy is what was, I think something that I, myself would not have embarked in if it was not for the leadership of Chief Westerman and showings sort of a vision even for myself. What the National Fire Academy asked us who is the next guy in line that you are sending and we did have Captain Dean Lake. He went to his first year and he wrote his first paper and again this is part of what we do there is you write applied research projects and these projects come back and we use it for our department. His one is officer development for the Kaua`i Fire Department. As you know the Kaiakea Station had a Leadership in Energy & Environmental Design (LEED) Silver Certificate and I think it is the first and only on the island. We did fill our secretary positions. We updated descriptions on all department positions, the kiosks and the rescue tubes at a couple of guarded beaches and dangerous beaches that we had. This is probably one of the highlights for at least the seniors is our dancing with them so we continue to support our community events not only that but the Hospice that we continue to do as a union initiative in helping out with the Hospice. I am going to go over real quick overview with the bureaus. The Prevention Bureau has been just amazing the last couple of years and again, this educational Sparky trailer has done wonders. It is part of the community risk reduction that we look at and as we educate people and bring in the tools to the community not having them come towards us but we are going out to the community and taking ownership to our communities. Inspections have increased and engine companies are along with them doing the preplans. Two hundred thirty-two (232) preplans and inspections and plans review is at a high pace at four hundred sixty-seven (467) construction plans and fire protection plans. We did investigate fourteen (14) fires last year, we started to increase our professional development and training network not only through the Sparky trailer but also being members in the Chamber of Commerce and things too to really be more a part of our community and getting a temperature of where they want us to be. The use, again of social media, there are always two (2) faces to social media. There are some bad sides but there is also a good presence for us and again it is reaching out to our community members and our constituents there that we need to have their support and exceed their expectations. Our Training Bureau, I think we came by earlier this year to asking for reallocating some of our funds that we had but we did send three (3) personnel to Colorado. Certified instructors in swift water rescue provided by Dive Rescue International and the Chief said, "I guess timing is everything" and as a department I think we identified that years back and we are finally getting on board with doing this swift water training for our department. The department also acquired a new rescue boat with funding from again a grant funding, Assistant to Firefighters Grant. The Koholalele was placed into service at the Kapa'a Fire Station and training has been provided for the station personnel. Again, this is something that has been identified and what you kind of even saw on the last rescue in Hankapi`ia, we have done many rescues up in the Secret Falls area, on Wailua River, rivers get swollen and people get trapped. So it is things that we have identified as hazards in certain communities. Again, Community Emergency Response Team (CERT), we are putting a lot of effort and I think the efforts of John Cornell and Kaeo Kinoshita has really pushed this more in the forefront and again we have had the basic twenty-four (24) hour classes, forty (40) with seventeen (17) in Hanalei, thirteen (13) in Lihue, ten (10) in Kapaa. The Princeville group is very active doing the cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) certification for twelve (12). At our CERT kick off there were thirty-four (34) participants there. Again, looking at the Westside and trying to...as we are trying to identify this is that, different communities looking at different things for their certain members so we are trying to identify that and to fill their needs in those certain areas. Again, on outreach events, county fair, State Canoe championships, the Hanalei long distance swim, Kilauea light house centennial, Lihue health and wellness expo. These are just things that, again we feel that our presence there and being a part of the community I think speaks volumes of where we are going with our department. Equipment acquired last year in CERT we did acquire a April 8, 2014 Fire Department Om) Page 5 4-runner for CERT, two (2) trailers that we have stationed in the island for emergency incidents like this especially when we see Hanalei bridge flooding, having the trailer and people available on the other side of the river, Automated External Defibrillators (AED) for the Princeville group also. Always our brightest star is our ocean safety. What can you say, Chair, about our ocean safety and our junior lifeguards, ten (10) time State champions and they continue to...when you are at the top they continue to shoot after you but again five (5) national champions, seventeen (17) awards in California, so we took the next step as far as not only representing the State in the national level. One (1) other thing that came up from last year and we continue to move forward is the sign replacement at the beaches of the warning signs. We are going to challenges now and again we try to look at our challenges and try to prioritize what can we do and what can we address? What we are talking about is that the Fire Department is in the business of risk reduction whether it is community risk reduction or within our members itself. That is our job is risk reduction so risk reduction is our number one priority not only for firefighters but also for the community members as a whole. Ocean safety: a lot of good things but again there are only so much we can do with what we have and they are suffering from being overworked, I guess and the span of control is starting to get away from us and then you will see this further on down as we are trying to do a reorganization and try to better address the supervisory needs that is presented to us in ocean safety. Part of it too is even on the backside is a lot of us when we are looking at this we still need administrative help. We are doing a great job on the response side, on the beaches, on the Fire Department side. There is a great job on the response side but again on the administrative side I think that is lacking and what happens a lot of the times is we are taking our key supervisors, moving them off their specific duties and having them maybe doing clerical stuff or thing that maybe could be done or taken up by others if we had the staffing. One of it is the Assistant Chiefs and currently in our department we have BCs, we have three (3) BCs but they all work a shift schedule and it is on/off, on/off, four (4) days off so they are coming on to help us elevate some of these things. Currently, the only two (2) at an officers rank that work a forty (40) hour work week is Chief and myself. A lot of the day to day things are taken up by us and it is hard for us to continue to manage that where I cannot assign someone to take on a project that will be there every day so that are some of the things that we are looking at about the Assistant Chief. Education, education, education is our biggest challenge. In everything that, even with this last rescue that you had in Hankapi`ai, educational part of it and it is something that we need to continue to push forward as we move forward not only among ourselves within our department but also partnering with other agencies and even non-governmental organizations (NGO) to really get the word out about our hazards. I mean there is a lot of beauty here but also getting out our hazards and being...again it is risk management that we are looking at. Maintaining inspections at the rate of...number five as mandated by State law. The Bureau averages two hundred (200) business inspections a year. That rate puts the inspection cycle up at every fifteen (15) years for us. Even with that, the limited staff that we have in prevention maintaining and securing those inspections, and I think last year we did touch on that again. That is one (1) of the topics we touched on and we are addressing those inspections also. Drowning: We had anomaly last year with the three (3) drowning and we are back up again and in spite of the efforts that we are doing there are still a lot of variables that play into the numbers that we have. That is something that we continue to address and we continue to take it head on and need to...like I said one (1) drowning is way too much. Going with our goals and objectives for the department this is one of our goals and it is National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) 1710 and it is the response times that we have for our stations and our crews responding to calls. We have been doing pretty well if you are looking at the chart there that straight green line is the six (6) minute average and if you are looking only at the calls that are early in the morning that takes a little more time to get there and to get to those calls but even the call volume, if you look at, the red line is the call volumes during April 8, 2014 Fire Department (lm) Page 6 different times of the day. During the midday, we have majority of our calls. Number two is part of risk reduction is the Building Occupancy and Risk Assessment (BORA). This is part of our initiatives as far as getting out to our communities, taking ownership in your communities. In each district that we have to put a face to a business and the business can see the firefighters and we are taking ownership in our communities. Going through and doing the preplans and getting in there to identify things that maybe need to be corrected and it also helps us as we respond to these calls. (inaudible) has always been up and (inaudible), it is a living document, it is completing the standard operating guidelines and now what we are trying to do a little bit better to hold ourselves accountable is putting it on a spreadsheet, having dates, having times to where we hold each other accountable as to where we are in the progress. Developing and supporting a safe and effective organization, we are looking at staffing levels again and how do we continue to do that. One (1) of the things we have done and will touch on it a little later is Staffing for Adequate Fire and Emergency Response (SAFER) grants that we have applied for and received and expended funds but these are the things we are looking at in trying to help us to reach this level of four (4) firefighters at eighty percent (80%) of the time. Chair Furfaro: Excuse me, Chief. I just want to ask one (1) question. The safer grant is the grant that we recently approved that dealt with the Lihue station not only having the response to the engine trucking but the additional staffing for the rescue and emergency? Mr. Blalock: Correct. Chair Furfaro: And that is effective July 1, 2014? Mr. Blalock: That actually has taken effect. Chair Furfaro: It already has been implemented? Mr. Blalock: It already has been implemented as far as that we did interviews, we did selection of firefighters. We are looking at starting a class May 1, 2014. The clock was ticking so we had to really jump forward and push that to the front of the priority for us. So we have done interviews, even yesterday I think we did some of the sizing on some of the new recruits that we had. We are moving forward with that. Chair Furfaro: So for this budget that we are dealing with right now, July 1, 2014 we will have that staff. Mr. Blalock: Correct. Chair Furfaro: Thank you very much. I did not mean to interrupt. Thank you. Mr. Blalock: No problem. Thank you, Chair. Part of the officer development, it ties into officer development and succession planning. Sending a minimum of two (2) firefighters to the National Fire Academy during the year. I think we have been very successful as far as applying and being able to receive that type of training. That is with minimal cost to the County for the training that we have. It is probably one of the best training opportunities that we have when you look at a cost benefit analysis in what cost for us to get there and the training that we receive from the National Fire Academy. We are also outlining a standardized comprehensive training. We have a new recruit class and what we are trying to do is create a yellow brick road. As we go through, April 8, 2014 Fire Department (lm) Page 7 how do you go from recruit all the way to Fire Chief? This is another initiative that we have. We are moving forward with as we will be seeing in this new recruit class and the certifications we are looking at and trying to keep us at a level that is recognized nationally. Goal D, finding more sources of revenue to supplement general funds use to support the department. It is always (inaudible) looking at grants that would fill some of the needs that we as a department has identified and again like I said I think it is one we have been successful at but the pie is shrinking. We continue to work hard and to help us to balance our budget also. Ensuring the health, safety, and wellness of department personnel. This is something that we just put in the past year with consultation with the union and we are in agreement with the union as far as having a...when we are doing our basic physicals there is also a respiratory testing that we are doing. Some of the trainings that we go to they require that to have the respiratory records of the firefighter to be presented before going to training. That is something we put in and one of the goals that we are going to initiate. Conducting fire inspections at intervals consistent with applicable laws and standards. This is a little bit redundant but again it is getting out and doing the inspections and developing...maintaining our system that we can work on and continue to move through year after year. Okay, we will get into the department's budget discussion and I think this is where we are all at. The current budget for 2014 was roughly twenty- three million dollars ($23,000,000), an increase of 1.88% over 2013. The 2015 budget jumped up to twenty-five and a half million ($25,500,000) dollars which is a 21% increase and that is largely attributed if not solely contributed to the CBA agreements that were signed earlier this year. Call volumes, if you look at call volumes, the call volume for 2013 was fifty-six hundred (56,000). An increase of 5% over 2012 but I think the even more glaring it is a 59% increase since 2002 and doing more with less as we address not only our tourist counts but also the growth within our communities will again be continuing looking at stressing or how do we manage this as we are moving forward. I think that is probably one of the things that we want to look at this chart here. Chair Furfaro: Okay, Chief I want to caution you and I have cautioned the Police Department on this. When you make a comparison that rolls yourselves back that far, I want you also to tell us what the dollars were. For example, if I put Civil Defense, Police, and Fire together since 2008 until now you folks budgets have increased sixteen million dollars ($16,000,000). Be very careful that we are not taking it to a base but we are not comparing what increases in operational support and payroll did occur too. Just to caution you. Mr. Blalock: Thank you, Chair. I guess what I was trying to point out is more so just the call load. Not looking at monetary value but the call load that has been increased with basically, well we have Kaikea too but what I am saying is the trend is going up and that is what we are looking at. Chair Furfaro: That is a better comparison. Thank you. Mr. Blalock: Even for us as we look forward and putting together a strategic plan and CIP projects, trying to get into CIP is where we are heading. Omissions that have gone is that they moved the Fire Commission budget to Boards' and Commission so you will see an increase in theirs for our budget that we had last year in our budget. The SAFER grant has been fully absorbed and that we are talking about our earlier SAFER grant that was at Kaikea so we are looking at acquiring again for another SAFER, not only on a level that we just got with the six (6) firefighters in Lihue but we are also going to try to apply this year SAFER grant this year to help us cover cost that we originally got from the fifteen (15) firefighters at Kaikea. I think this something to help us balance where we are at. The salaries and benefits each increased from 87% to 89% of our April 8, 2014 Fire Department (lm) Page 8 total operating budget. When you look at salaries and...let me go back to this one again. Taking out salaries from our budget if you look at our total operating budget now we actually have decreased in our budget. Ms. Yukimura: Chair. Chair Furfaro: Go right ahead, JoAnn. Ms. Yukimura: Can we just be real clear about this though. In all the departments the Office of Other Post-Employment Benefits (OPEB) expenses are not being fully paid, that is for our obligations in health benefits so it is not really a decrease in many cases. It is not really a decrease, right? Mr. Blalock: What I was trying to bring attention to is that if you looking at just...I am trying to show that just from a salary stand point, yes it has increased and maybe OPEB is not fully funded so it may be a reduction per say but I guess CBA is on top of that. If I am looking at just aside from salaries, salaries and OPEB items that operating budget for us has declined. Ms. Yukimura: Okay, I will look at that. Thank you. Chair Bynum: I want to make sure that we are all clear though. For every dollar we pay for a salary in the County, Kaua`i County is one of two counties that actually pay 100% of their OPEB benefits. It is ourselves and Maui and let us say that represents fifty cents (50¢) for every productive payroll dollar. We are only paying 73% of that liability. Ms. Yukimura: This year. Chair Furfaro: For this year, our first year. The law only requires us to put 20% of it in reserve so all departments should be aware that 27% difference actually would have shown up in you Payroll Benefits and other Expenses (PB&E). We just want to make sure that we are all careful when we talk about what was reduced because the liability does not go away. Okay. Ms. Yukimura: We are just deferring it. The liability. Chair Furfaro: We are just deferring it. Mr. Blalock: Thank you. If you look at number 3 here you know the fire loss value for 2013 was two million five hundred dollars ($2,500,000) and increase of 39% over the prior year. These variables that we look at is a part that we want to continue to bring down and part of it is when we talk about community risk reduction. Going out into the communities, doing their preplans, doing inspections, the Sparky trailer is all part of an effort for us to limit or to decrease the monetary loss to our constituents here on Kaua`i. Number 4 we have been successful in adding one million three hundred thousand dollars ($1,300,000) in grant funding. 2013 divided into two (2) years for SAFER bringing up the total from nine million dollars ($9,000,000) all the way back from 2009. If you look at our department, even on a nationwide basis, the success that we have had is almost unheard of. We have other Chiefs from other departments that we have had networking with asking for our applications as far as how do we write it, where are we doing it, so I think it is a testament to the men and women of the Fire Department. On the flip side of it, managing grants. Receiving, expending it, paperwork, putting in the April 8, 2014 Fire Department (lm) Page 9 quarterly reports, the end reports again it takes time and effort. I think as firemen we figure it out and we learn how to do it and we are just going to do it the best we can with what we have. We continue to do this and we put an extra burden, not only on our firefighters but also our administrative staff. We need to do this and we need to get this completed and the deadline is...we need it done. Some things get reprioritized and have to get things done. I think it does and I applaud them for what they do and how they continue to support us in that efforts. This is the last one. This is requests from your side again asking about the vacancies. When I look at this I just look at number two. The first two firefighter positions will be filled, if they pass physical and things like that. So we have made selections. Due to the fact that we had a SAFER grant of six (6) firefighters we went down, instead of just doing a class of just six (6) we went down and hired the last two (2) vacancies that we had available so we had a class of eight (8). Ocean safety is...addressing ocean safety is a...I guess it is really double edged having the right supervisory levels and still having the bodies on beach. How we go down this road and how we try to manage this is something that as we move forward, we really need to address. Other than that, that is a quick overview of what we had and what I will do is I will open it up to questions and if it is for a specific bureau I will have our supervisors come up. Chair Furfaro: (inaudible) Mr. Kagawa: Thank you, Chair. Thank you for your presentation, John and I just want to echo what the Chair said and all the Members thank you and really appreciate your work each and every day. Especially yesterday where we no lives being loss and all of those that were affected is just tremendous accomplishment. Thank you and with that I just have a couple questions. I think this is a lean, mean budget. Two million four hundred thousand dollars ($2,400,00) increase but salaries, just in operations is two million three hundred thousand dollars ($2,300,000) and it is due to the collective bargaining increases and so basically I think this is a very lean budget. We cut if probably as much as you guys could without affecting the public safety and still yet giving the firemen the training and equipment that they need to continue to do the good job that they do. I had a personal experience last year when my father-in-law suffered a massive heart attack in March. I guess in our darkest time what I remember most was that the firemen, even though he was already passed they gave 120% or even more to continue to try and save him. I really got a firsthand experience as to the daily life that the firemen go through in trying to help the people. They go all out and I appreciate it. I just have a couple questions regarding the overtime in the operations. I see that is going up about two hundred four thousand dollars ($204,000) and I was just wondering if there is a reason why it is jumping. Is it because of the collective bargaining increases affected that? We keep hearing that if we get fully staffed that we should be able to kind of control the overtime but I know emergencies are not easy to control but if you have a response to that. Mr. Blalock: Thank you, Councilmember Kagawa. Our overtime, when you are looking at an overtime budget we have holiday pay that is in there, it attributes to a lot of the overtime that you see in that line item, that is scheduled overtime so there are some items...I think we have... Mr. Kagawa: She can come up. Chair Furfaro: Chief, I want to make sure I understood instead of us going through administration, operations, prevention, and training you are allowing us to ask questions of all and you will call up the appropriate people? So we have called her up for Mr. Kagawa's question. April 8, 2014 Fire Department (lm) Page 10 Mr. Kagawa: If you can state your name. ROSE BETTENCOURT, Administrative Officer: In election years there is an extra holiday so that would account for some of the increase and also with the pay increases that accounts for the increase in the dollar amount of the holiday pay. Mr. Kagawa: I guess the second part of my question was that we got a little more bodies through the SAFER grant and one of the Councilmembers mentioned if we get fully staffed at some point we should be able to kind of, maybe even reduce our overtime that we are getting because I guess we have more coverage but I do not know if it really works that way for the Fire Department. Ms. Bettencourt: Normal for let us say for people taking off, on vacation, yes but in their contract they are entitled to work the holiday so it is not a matter of scheduling them off on the holiday. It is their choice. Mr. Kagawa: So some of it is a given with given the nature of the job and the contract because it is twenty-four (24) hours. Ms. Bettencourt: Yes. Mr. Kagawa: Thank you. Second question, regarding the Rank for Rank system, I see that it has gone up from fifty-five thousand dollars ($55,000) to eight hundred fifty-nine thousand dollars ($859,000). Ms. Bettencourt: Yes. Mr. Kagawa: That is an increase of eight hundred thousand dollars ($800,000) and if you could explain why it is such a big jump. Ms. Bettencourt: Yes. That is because the ranked individuals are allowed or entitled to have twelve (12) Rank for Rank shifts in the fiscal year. Where it was at one point, I think this current year is just one (1). So it is now twelve (12) per ranked individual versus one (1) for the current year for the Fire Department. Mr. Kagawa: Is this Rank for Rank...we are only recognizing it in this fiscal year because we only had fifty-five thousand dollars ($55,000) in there. Ms. Bettencourt: Yes, because ranked individual this current year is entitled to work one Rank for Rank shift but now with the next fiscal year they will be entitled to twelve (12), each ranked individual. Mr. Blalock: I am sorry, Rose. Yes, this is something else negotiated in the CBA agreement. That is why you see that and again this is some of the items that was negotiated and signed off on. In defense of the Rank for Rank program it is bringing qualified or officers at a certain level and I think when we do something like this, even a bigger incident, we do an incident command structure and things like that I have qualified people in certain positions to help that. It is part of our risk management and how we are going to manage certain incidents on any given day or any given time. That is part of it but the total and the cost is a CBA. Mr. Kagawa: If I could ask a follow-up on that. Is this Rank for Rank in the future going to stay at about this amount of eight hundred fifty-nine April 8, 2014 Fire Department (lm) Page 11 thousand dollars ($859,000) or is it going to continue to jump another eight hundred thousand dollars ($800,000)? Ms. Bettencourt: It is going to stay that amount and increase as collective bargaining pay increases go up. So it will go up as pay increases go up through the years. Mr. Kagawa: It is just I have to ask these questions because we are basically broke, we are proposing to raise taxes for hotels, proposing to raise you vehicle weight taxes, solid waste fees...I want to try and see where we can control the cost. Where ever it may be in every department and because I am just really thinking ahead and thinking where is this County headed if we cannot control our cost at some point. I thank you for your responses. Thank you, Chair. Chair Furfaro: Hold on a second. I think there may be other questions along this line. If there are I am going to ask the Councilmembers to address that with you first. JoAnn, you have the floor. Ms. Yukimura: So we are staying on the two (2) subjects first? Chair Furfaro: For right now if there are any further questions. Ms. Yukimura: I do have questions. Rose, you said that the over-time cost were increased this year because we have an additional holiday, elections day...actually it is two (2) primary and general? Ms. Bettencourt: No. Just the general. Ms. Yukimura: Oh, just the general, okay, thank you. There was another reason for the increase in over-time? Ms. Bettencourt: With the collective bargaining pay increases, their holiday pay foes up due to the too. Ms. Yukimura: For the Rank for Rank the eight hundred thousand dollar ($800,000) increase is because the collective bargaining rule has gone from one (1) Rank for Rank shift to... Ms. Bettencourt: Twelve (12). Ms. Yukimura: Twelve (12) per... Ms. Bettencourt: Per ranked officer which would be our Fire Captains, Fire Apparatus Operators and our Fire Rescue Specialist, the Hazmat...I think that is it. Ms. Yukimura: And Hazmat, okay. Chief, you were saying that it is important for emergency commands or excuse me if I am not... Mr. Blalock: It is partially for that, it also helps us with staffing levels as one of our goals that we had, it was our staffing levels so what you would see is if someone takes off, a ranked officer takes off you have a ranked officer that will replace them so the integrity of that crew is still at a level that is acceptable also to us. It is April 8, 2014 Fire Department (lm) Page 12 going to help out. It is a little bit of a wash too because sometimes when we are short and if whether they are sick, vacation, whatever the case may be we will call back firefighters to get the staffing levels to where it needs to be. It is kind of a give and take there with the Rank for Rank versus the call backs of firefighters. Ms. Yukimura: I guess what you miss out a little bit or maybe, I am not familiar with the whole system though, is what you are doing right now, which is like temporary assignment is a training way too, right? You can take people who are lower ranks and just on certain occasions they get to play the higher role to get trained. Mr. Blalock: That is still in place to where that does happen, when you temporary assign (TA) someone up to a position to engage some responsibility and things like that but when you talk about risk management it is the qualifications there, is the certifications there? So this is what you are looking at also. It is kind of a two edged sword that you are looking at. Ms. Yukimura: But sometimes it does not happen? It is like you are saying one (1) to twelve (12) per...is this per year? Ms. Bettencourt: Yes. Ms. Yukimura: So every time there is a absence of say a Captain, you do not always have to put a Captain in, you just have to do it twelve (12) times a year? Ms. Bettencourt: They are offered the opportunity to do it twelve (1) times... Ms. Yukimura: They have the first right of refusal? Ms. Bettencourt: Yes. Ms. Yukimura: Okay, but if they do not want it, then what happens? Ms. Bettencourt: Then it would be the TA process, temporary assignment process. Mr. Blalock: We go back to our TA process. Ms. Yukimura: I see, thank you for helping me understand that. Chair Furfaro: I am going to follow-up on that one (inaudible). May I presume that if they refuse it you then document it? Ms. Bettencourt: Yes. Chair Furfaro: Because I want to make sure we understand that with the bargaining unit we are on the short end. We only have one (1) of nine (9) votes, the County of Kaua`i. But in that negotiation if it is offered to them I want to make sure the pieces...we have to offer it to them at least twelve (12) times. If they chose not to accept it that should be documented somewhere. Ms. Bettencourt: Absolutely. We keep record of those so an opportunity that is declined is marked as one of the opportunities so that one is gone. Yes. April 8, 2014 Fire Department (lm) Page 13 Chair Furfaro: That helps me then. I want to make sure you understand, this is not a complaint but I want to make sure. In our public safety area, and these are my numbers and I am pretty good with numbers, that we have been discussing the fact that we used about a forty-four million dollar ($44,000,000) surplus that the County had since 2008. It is a true statement because we have grown, we have added services, we have added Commissions and later in the presentation I will be showing everyone where forty-one million dollars ($41,000,000) went, the world according to Jay Furfaro. But in the public service area, Police, Fire, and Civil Defense we went from thirty- two million eight hundred thousand dollars ($32,800,000) in 2008 to forty-nine million one hundred thousand dollars ($49,100,000). So between Fire, Police, and Civil Defense, sixteen million dollars ($16,000,000) of our increases are right there. All for good reason and all can be justified but we really need to say going forward we need to make sure we have a clear understanding about controls and how we are controlling it and that is why I ask about an offer is made and it is declined it is recorded as such. Ms. Bettencourt: Yes. Chair Furfaro: Now here is another lesson I want to share with you folks. Welcome, Mr. Rapozo. He had an emergency at his home. Our only excused absence today is Mr. Bynum but here is a consequence of when you are absent, you get assigned a special committee. I forgot to tell you Mr. Rapozo that at the beginning of today's meeting, as you are the Chair of Public Safety, I have asked yourself and Vice Chair Chock to focus on a special committee to review the incidents that we responded to on the north shore with Fire and Rescue and asking that we also provide the people from the Fire Department, Water Safety, Civil Defense, Police and as JoAnn discussed, DLNR to just kind of evaluate the events of the last two (2) days. Welcome and you have been so anointed, so I thought I would tell you. On that note I will give the floor to Mr. Chock. Mr. Chock: Thank you, Chair. Thank you guys so much. I love the video. I brings me back memories and I miss being along the ranks with you folks. I think it is pretty clear from the Chair's message the kind of uphill battle we have and Councilmember Kagawa mentioned it as well. I am kind of taking a step back from all of it, looking at it like what is it we have to do in the next three (3) years in order to not only shift our mindset towards looking at our budgets in a different light and how we are going to either focus more on the prevention side so we can decrease our liabilities or is it decrease the manpower and the risks that we intend to expose ourselves there. I think you folks know that it is there and it is coming and if I was to look at it from a business standpoint what would that look like and I think that is the kind of questions that I would like to see us have or discussion I would like to see us have, maybe not specifically for today but as we move forward. I do not know if that is anything that you can mention or speak to in the direction that the Fire Department is leaning towards but that is really what I am focused on. I guess if you would like to respond to that please. Mr. Blalock: Thank you, Mason, and we do miss you. Chair Furfaro: You cannot have him. Mr. Blalock: I cannot have him? I know you have been in those situations. You have been on the end of a line and things like that, and the reward that we get. We really hear the message loud and clear in what we are looking at and I think, even for us, as a department we continue to impress upon our members about going the extra mile. Providing and exceeding expectations of the tax payers. As part of all of our initiatives, when you talk about even the risk reductions, yes it is that. Maybe we are not April 8, 2014 Fire Department (lm) Page 14 bringing in money but maybe I am saving money on the backend against lawsuits and things like that and how we manage and how we do things. When you look at it like a business sense and you looking at it, yes, it is a big increase. Public safety has taken a big chunk of the excess that was there. It is an island and I think that even for some of the trainings that we have done is that Kaua`i as a whole is very resilient but we also get overwhelmed. Our resources get overwhelmed with one incident. If you have a couple of incidents like at one time we had the floods for forty days, you have incidents on different parts of the island, you have a dam breach. In that respect I am saying this is what we are doing, this is the training that we are having in that level of service that we need to manage these incidents in a safe and appropriate manner. It is a tough one when you are looking at it and sometimes we say it is the cost of doing business but it is where we are moving. We are trying to continue to impress upon us about the level of service that we are providing as a department. Chair Furfaro: I am going to ask that the members if you can indulge with me for a minute. I have to step out to another meeting at10:30 a.m. at which time I would like to turn this meeting over to Mr. Rapozo but from your presentation I have a few questions...I just want some quick responses if we can. Do you mind Mr. Rapozo? Mr. Rapozo: No. Chair Furfaro: And then I will give you the meeting. We talked a little bit about, has there been any more exploration on a quick response unit in Ha`ena during flooding or anything? Just a simple yes or no. Has there been any more talk of it? Mr. Blalock: When you say quick response unit what we did... Chair Fufaro: Small truck parked in a County yard. Mr. Blalock: District 1 is always a district that we look at with...it is the broadest district and the furthest away and it is always on our priority. I forgot to mention even in our replacement cycle of engines that is one of the things we held back again and we are trying to use a replacement schedule that goes off of our lease schedule so it does not do this to my budget but it is looking at one of the ideas we have is when we replace the Hanalei engine possibly placing that on the other side of the bridge so when we put personnel to...the bridge floods, boom get it across because even recently we got America Medical Response (AMR) down there, we have the CERT...we are looking at it to address those issues. It is on the radar and is something that we are looking at. Chair Furfaro: That is all I need right now. So it is still on the radar screen. What did you mean if we had to investigate a total of fourteen (14) fires this year? Does that mean that these were suspicious in nature or... Mr. Blalock: Anytime there is a fire, whether it is a structural fire or things like that we have our bureau go out, Prevention Bureau that is on call, goes out and does an investigation and does a report. Chair Furfaro: I am satisfied with that. I just want to make sure that it was not dealing with the nature of the... Mr. Blalock: And it might prove...if deemed or determined that then you will have that and police coming in and doing an arson investigation. April 8, 2014 Fire Department (lm) Page 15 Chair Furfaro: You spoke about training funds that were reallocated. Was that based on recruitment? Where was it reallocated? Mr. Blalock: The training funds are something even like swift water, how we reprioritize as we are moving along. We had certain moneys there for certain training. Even this class, we did not plan to have a recruit class but then all of a sudden we got the award and so it went and these are the things we look at and as we address it we are looking at what we have and I think overall as a department we have been pretty fiscally sound in using the moneys that we have and even though we have to come across to reallocate certain moneys I think we have done a great job of doing that. Chair Furfaro: Some of this was triggered on your success with getting other grants? Mr. Blalock: Correct. Chair Furfaro: Okay, good. Just a few more (inaudible). Do you know the four (4) vehicles, the 4-runners you have, do you know the terms of those leases? Are they for five (5) years, seven (7) years, do we know? Ms. Bettencourt: I believe it was three (3) years. The smaller trucks, I believe that was for three (3) years. We can follow up though if you need. Mr. Blalock: I think the engine is seven (7) year. I think the smaller vehicles are going to three (3) years. Chair Furfaro: I will send that one over in writing. The other you do not have to...I am satisfied with this. Ms. Bettencourt: Okay. Mr. Chock: Follow-up. Chair Furfaro: Go ahead. Mr. Chock: Those 4-runners you mentioned were for CERT, yes? Mr. Blalock: There is one (1) for CERT. That is one of the highlights that we did is that we got a 4-runner for CERT with grant money. Chair Furfaro: Do you know how much money was moved from the Fire Department as it relates to expenses that use to be for the Fire Commission, use to be in your department for the Fire Commission but now was transferred to Paula as Boards and Commission? Ms. Bettencourt: I believe it was around nineteen thousand dollars ($19,000)...no it was actually ten thousand dollars ($10,000). Chair Furfaro: I just want to say to my colleagues thank you for letting me go because I do have to step out and Mel I will turn the meeting over to you. I will probably be out for about forty-five (45) minutes to an hour. April 8, 2014 Fire Department (lm) Page 16 Chair Furfaro, the presiding officer, relinquished Chairmanship to Mr. Rapozo. Mr. Rapozo: Okay and thank you for allowing me to serve on that committee. Chair Furfaro: You are blessed. Mr. Rapozo: I apologize for being late. The emergency was our toilet. When you live in a three (3) bedroom house with one (1) toilet, when the one (1) gets plugged up it a crisis and I actually thought of calling you folks because I really did feel stranded and actually I felt like I would rather be one (1) of the one hundred twenty-one (121) in Hanakapi`ai with a rising river. Mr. Hooser: That is more information than we need. Chair Furfaro: True confessions here. Mr. Blalock: It rises rapidly too. Mr. Rapozo: We almost called you folks but I am not going to get into that discussion because I am sure there was a lot about the rescue. But I will say that I saw Representative Kawakami on facebook and he publicly came out and addressed this issue or is looking to address this issue so Mr. Chair I will definitely be in contact with him because I think the State law has a lot to do with us not being able to charge. I do not know if you folks had that discussion of charging. Did you folk have the discussion of charging? Chair Furfaro: We are saying that is what we are going to (inaudible). Just so you know I did not point out but someone from Mr. Kawakami's office and someone from the Mayor's office were suggested to be on your taskforce. Mr. Rapozo: Yes, I was going to ask if it is possible to get a multi-office/multi-jurisdictional discussion because I think it is time that we had that. You did say something about the cost of doing business and that is one of the things. A lot of people in the community and I have caught myself saying it sometimes where we have to start running this County like a business. And it is true to a certain point but when it comes to public safety obviously you cannot utilize statistics to justify how many police of firemen you are going to have. You are going to have districts that need the same service but they are much smaller so if you were to put out analysis and a cost per resident it would be astronomical. In business, you would be able to write that off and say "Hey, we are not going to provide that this year" but in public safety we cannot. It is just something we just have to deal with and we have to be ready and available to provide. Chair Furfaro: I am going to excuse myself for the next forty-five (45) minutes or so. Mr. Rapozo: Okay. Thank you, Mr. Chair. And Rose it is nice to see you. You do not age at all. I do not believe it. Ms. Bettencourt: Why thank you. You are so sweet. Mr. Rapozo: You look like... anyway. Ms. Bettencourt: Better than my husband. April 8, 2014 Fire Department (lm) Page 17 Mr. Rapozo: He is not watching. I am looking at the schedule, it is administration and I am assuming that is where we are at right now. Are there anymore questions? I am assuming your administration presentation is done. Mr. Blalock: The way we set it up, Councilmember Rapozo, is I just gave a brief overview and Councilmember Kagawa came up and he had some questions on the budget so what we will do is you can ask the question on the budget side if there are questions on Ocean safety I can have Kalani Vierra come up. Mr. Rapozo: I would like to go down the list that has been provided just so that we can keep some order and not bounce all over the place which tends to happen because things pop up in our heads at odd times. Let us just start with the administration part. Are there any questions on the administration part of the Kaua`i Fire Department(KFD) budget? Okay. Ms.Yukimura: I just want to first say that video that you showed at the beginning really highlighted how important your work is and how it is a matter of life and death and we are so grateful for the skill and the dedication that you have. Thank you very much. I also want to say that the budget session is always an education. It is an education for us and I remember, was it last budget were I was questioning the swift water rescue training? The Chief did well in justifying it but it is this kind of real life application that really makes us understand how important some things are that on first glace we cannot understand. I just want to say that it was in you presentation, the junior lifeguard ten (10) times champions are just stunning and we are so proud of you doing that. I am really happy to see the CERTS support that is happening because I know from Hurricane Iniki that there was so much self help that was needed. There was no way we as a County Government could do it and to empower our citizens, there is already such an initiative on part of our citizens. I remember the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) guys coming from Hurricane Andrew in Florida and they said it was so different on Kauai where people were checking on their neighbors and helping where as in Florida they were waiting with their guns in their house. I think the CERT program is really excellent. So my question is on your...it was your slide 8, but it was on your response time recap and you have a graph and maybe Scott we can put that graph up again. It is really great that you are using data and looking at the data. Your response time recap you show that early morning hours and late at night there is a longer response time and I was wondering how you analyze the reasons for that. I do not know, maybe there is someone... Mr. Rapozo: Maybe Councilmember Yukimura that question is best handled by the operations division when we bring that up because I think that is more of an operations question than administration. Which is next... Ms. Yukimura: It is just because we started with this other process. Mr. Rapozo: Mr. Kagawa that is why. Thank you. Continue Councilmember Yukimura. That is my fault for coming in late. Ms.Yukimura: I guess I do not have a clear demarcation of administration at this point. Chief Deputy, if you want to bring in your operations people that would be great. April 8, 2014 Fire Department (lm) Page 18 ALBERT KAUI, Battalion Chief: Council, the reason is during the daylight hours, normally our companies are out and about doing inspections so when we get a call we respond immediately versus at night when guys are resting. I believe that is the reason our response times reflects the difference. Ms.Yukimura: But at night and early mornings there is not traffic on the road. Mr. Kaui: But what I am saying is that we are out in the community driving around so we respond immediately when we get the call on the radio. When we are at the station the call comes in, people get together, get their gear, get on the truck and then we respond versus responding immediately. Mr. Blalock: Actually, when you said in the nighttime there is nobody on the road. There are people on the road and usually those that are on the road at 2:00 a.m. are...I do not want to say but maybe under the influence of other things so it is kind of...even our (inaudible) some people ask "why do you go with the siren?" It is actually more imperative that we respond during the nights with lights and siren because of who else might be out there. Ms.Yukimura: My I go on to another question or does somebody else... Mr. Rapozo: Anyone else have a question? Councilmember Chock just pointed out that the response time difference is like a couple of minutes. Just about the time to get out bed and get your clothes on and brush your...you probably do not brush your teeth but... Ms.Yukimura: That is very helpful, thank you very much. Mr. Rapozo: I had the same question but as he shows me the chart it is just such a small difference. That would account for the putting on the gear and loading up the truck and driving out of there. So it is not traffic it is really just the prep to get in the truck and out on the road. Thank you, Mr. Chock. It sure is great to have a fireman on the Council. Ms. Yukimura: Yes or just somebody who knows how to read graphs better. Because the graphic shows a huge drop but you are right the increments are just in minutes so thank you for that. My I go on or... Mr. Rapozo: Any other question in...any other administrative questions? If we can just get administration out than we can just start the operations dialogue. We can come back to it. Mr. Chock: Just a quick question, Chair. One of the things I heard was that the difficulty of having the Battalion Chiefs (BC) who come on and off and there is a need administratively so is there a plan? I should know this but what is the plan in order to address that specific need so that projects can continue, there is always someone present and so forth. Mr. Blalock: I think it is something that we have identified as we are growing, as a department, as a whole. I am the First Deputy. We did not even have a Deputy before, we did not even have BCs before so as we go through this and as you look at April 8, 2014 Fire Department (lm) Page 19 management and you are looking at models that are out there nationwide and how we manage to get to things done. Without the help of the BCs and Captains that come in on their off times and their days off to help assist and push through projects that needs to have attention and get done. It is at a point where we are losing a little more accountability on if so we want to think that even when we did our goals is that we are holding, we are putting timelines, we need to report where we are, where we are at. So we are trying to manage that as best we can but that is why some people have a hard time to understand the fireman's schedule, on, off, on, off, four (4) days off. So one weekend it is like two weeks and before you know it there are procurement or things like that trying to get the person in there and being available to answer questions or to get something done. If he is in charge of that project and he is on his four (4) days off it might have some lag time in that. They are all willing...this is all above and beyond their job descriptions so when you look at their job descriptions and what they are tasked to do this is way above and beyond that anyone is doing it and again this is their department. We have to take that ownership in our department and try to move forward. We have actually tried to identify the Assistant Chief(AC) I think even three (3) or four (4) years ago. It is something that we need to continue, for myself is to continue to put forward and put forward every year that I come up here. I need to say we need ACs. I think overall on the response side and how we do response and everything we do a great job. Ocean safety as well as on our Fire side but again it is the administration as trying to move into the twenty first century how are we going to do this? How are we going to achieve these programs that we need to get to if we are even looking at accreditation? So these are some of the things that as we move forward we need the support of ACs that will be on a schedule that is Monday thru Friday. Mr. Rapozo: Councilmember Yukimura. Ms.Yukimura: I have an administrative question. To the extent that grant writing is an administrative thing and adds to the burden of the administration you have such highly educated people among your firefighters is there any way that they could do it while at the station? Mr. Blalock: I can answer it but I will let Kilipaki Vaughn who is the head of our grants committee and he can answer that for you. KILIPAKI VAUGHN, Fire Inspector: For the record, Fire Inspector, Kilipaki Vaughn, Kauai Fire Department. If it please, the Council, thank you for having us here today. As far as the grants for years now...I think for about maybe eight (8) years I have been working on grants. I think eight to ten (8— 10) years and a lot of that time was at the station. All of that time was on duty trying to fill the need, exploring different avenues and opportunities to really expand the department, help it out in identifying different resources. A lot of the time does happen, a lot of the grant management, administrative side, the writing occurs while on duty. Ever since my move into the forty (40) hour work week it has been even more challenging to try to accomplish the prevention duties that I am assigned as well as the grant duties, supervising, trying to build capacity, finding new authors, new grant writers, assigning new grant managers. As more awards come in we have been trying to build that capacity up and a lot of it has been on company time rather than taking people away and adding into an overtime (inaudible). Ms.Yukimura: Kilipake, you are now the head of prevention? Mr. Vaughn: I am filling in for my Captain, Daryl Date who is at a State Fire Council meeting today. April 8, 2014 Fire Department (lm) Page 20 Ms.Yukimura: Okay. I just want to say I get some sense of the diversity of your work because both you and Captain Date have been at the built environment meetings where there are issues of smart growth and speed humps and all of this interface of fire responsibilities with the kind of community we are trying to create so I really do appreciate that. If you have been grant writing for eight to ten (8— 10) years you are partly responsible or maybe mainly responsible for the success of the department in its grant writing so I just want to acknowledge you for that too. The answer to my question is yes, you actually have been doing grant writing in the stations or you have people in the stations doing grant writing. Mr. Vaughn: Yes, we are actively trying to write more grants to backfill the fifteen (15) that are coming up. The fifteen (15) firefighters for the 2008 SAFER that expires in about a week from now and then the new 2013 SAFER period performance starts in about a week so they kind of dove tail together. I worked on 2008 SAFER. I have another firefighter in the station that works on SAFER 2013 and a lot of these opportunities would not be possible without the support of Deputy Chief Blalock and Fire Chief Bob Westerman as well as all of the captains that have been my supervisors in the past. Thank you. Ms.Yukimura: We actually have payroll on these SAFER grants? I mean positions are being funded by grants? Mr. Vaughn: The SAFER grant is a acronym for Staffing for Adequate Fire Emergency Response and part of that comes in is the NFPA 1710 that you are talking about up there. There is a certain time of response with a certain amount of staff and the national standard from the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) is at least four(4) people responding within the six (6) minute period of time. Over the years in 2008 SAFER we had a staffing level of one hundred twenty-nine (129) people was our overall base line of staffing. Then we had to maintain that over the five (5) year period which became very difficult for many of the fire departments across the nation. Departments were turning down SAFER because it became too stringent on the conditions to stay within compliance. Departments were actually giving millions of dollars because they could not manage it well. Somehow we have been able to really manage it and put the resources there. We have just been fortunate through the new period it does cover salaries and fringe benefits. There was a nine hundred forty-four thousand seven hundred dollars ($944,700), I believe that came our way through this recent... Ms.Yukimura: How much? Mr. Vaughn: Nine hundred forty-four seven hundred dollars ($944,700). Ms. Yukimura: Okay, that is a lot of money. Mr. Vaughn: Close to one million dollars ($1,000,000). Mr. Blalock: Let me touch on that real quick too, Councilmember Yukimura. We keep looking at 1710. We are talking about staffing levels. We are talking about response times. This all equates into the insurance ratings that constituents have and I think Kaikea has actually brought insurance rates down for Anahola side and up in Kawaihau district. That is why I am saying when you are looking at the 1710 and the national standard it ties directly into insurance rates and how you get rated as a April 8, 2014 Fire Department (lm) Page 21 department. These things on staffing and response time it does tie in, there is a benefit and that why we have it up there. Ms.Yukimura: Okay. Thank you. From the standpoint of land use planning one of our concerns is the more spread out the development the more vulnerable we are in terms of making our response times and the more expensive it is that is why there is real emphasis for compact growth because it is much easier to service but more importantly...well not more importantly but as important is because we have tight budgets it is less expensive to service when you have growth all in one place. One of the things I have been talking about and looking at in our general plan process, we may set different levels of service for rural areas for agricultural subdivisions and that is something we have to look at but going back to the SAFER grant, if we do not make these response times then we have to return the money? Mr.Vaughn: I do not believe so. We are required to maintain a level of staffing through the period. This next 2013 SAFER grant is for two (2) years and we have to maintain a level of I believe one hundred thirty-five (135)...one hundred thirty-six (136) through our overall staffing. I think through (inaudible) and maybe retirements in the coming years we may have to backfill. The economy is (inaudible) hard to start a recruit class with just two (2) people so we try to fill as many as possible and then try to address that in the future. The next two (2)years the SAFER 2013 is effective. Ms.Yukimura: Okay. Thank you. What we have to do on our part is keep our staffing full? Mr. Vaughn: Yes. Ms.Yukimura: Okay. Great. Those standards of response on the response time are they based on fire fighting or emergency medical or both? Mr. Vaughn: I believe 1710 is strictly for fire fighters in gathering initial attack for fire. Building enough people, I believe it is fifteen (15) personnel if you have an area and sixteen (16)without an area, a ladder apparatus. Ms.Yukimura: I see. So if you have high rises there is a bigger staffing requirement? Mr. Vaughn: Yes. Ms.Yukimura: If that is basically a fire fighting standard like in your report, Chief most of our work is actually emergency response. Mr. Blalock: 1710 is a fire standard, yes correct. Ms.Yukimura: So what is the emergency standard? Mr. Blalock: They do not delineate between a fire...we are tracking it now, again it is not only on a fire scene that you can provide the service but you are also looking at four(4) man crew whether it is doing CPR or things like that. So when you are looking at just...what he is saying is 1710 because it is national fire it does look at a fire scene... April 8, 2014 Fire Department (lm) Page 22 Ms.Yukimura: How many paramedics are required? I mean how many go out usually to an emergency? Mr. Blalock: You know that AMR does the...how you say...again this is another thing we are addressing is the level of service that we are going to even be training our fire fighters too. It is kind of a new thing that we are going with even with this recruit class but go to ENT being nationally register. What we train to current is a first responder level and that is not even recognized anymore. I think they teach first responders to sixth grade kids so these are the things that like I said we are addressing. And we are going a little bit off the subject but again these are things that we are looking at and it basically goes back to providing service to a community whether it is medical or whether it is fire. Ms.Yukimura: Okay, thank you very much. Mr. Rapozo: Councilmember Chock. Mr. Chock: Just to follow-up. Aloha, Kilipake. Mr. Vaughn: Aloha. Mr. Chock: I am so happy we have a grant writer. I am hoping we have a few more. I am not an advocate of sustaining budgets with grants but I think this would be more of a request, Chair, if the Council could get a...maybe a clearer picture of what the future grants are that you folks are looking at. I think it will help us to, as people looking at our budget forecast the direction and the impact on future budgets that you folks are going to be presenting. I would just be clearer for us to see what it is you folks are moving towards. Maybe in this budget what it is you are looking at, what grants, what they are going to be used for. Is that possible? Mr. Vaughn: Sure. We can get together a list of the grants that we...we actually have a list together and every year we try to pursue the Assistance to Firefighter's grants under FEMA and under that umbrella there are three (3) big ones that are competitive across the nation. Deputy Chief Blalock spoke to the competitiveness of that. It is getting more competitive because there is less money going to each of these areas. One (1) of the areas is SAFER, again that is a big area. The Assistance to Firefighter's grant is another, the second of that and the Fire Prevention and Safety grant is the third. We have received grants in all areas since 2005 I believe. We have been lucky to continue to leverage our capabilities to get to those. There are some other ones that are out there, the Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) is one of those that we actively pursue every year from the County of Kaua`i. There is the Rural Facilities grant that is from the Department of Agriculture. We are trying to explore for maybe a division for possible future expansion to other areas. That could address that as well. The Office of Hawaiian Affairs (OHA) has an Ahahui grant that would help us in prevention efforts. They are actively open now and they close next week. I am exploring that right at the moment. I believe there is the Volunteer Fire Assistances grant that Deputy Chief Blalock looks at every year. Outside of Homeland Security grant that Captain (inaudible) helps to supervise along with Civil Defense. I know that money is starting to be compressed as far as budget. A lot of what we have had in the past had come from that way and now the balance is kind of shifting. There are some other ones out there that we can get to you a little bit later with, a list. Mr. Chock: Thank you. April 8, 2014 Fire Department (lm) Page 23 Mr. Rapozo: Thank you, Mr. Chock. I just looked over to Steve and you do not have to come up just an acknowledgment. Does the County, the Finance Department or any department in the County act as like the clearing house or someplace that keeps track of all the grants? Okay, I think I know the answer. Mr. Hunt: We have... Mr. Rapozo: That is fine. I just think that is something that we can ask Finance to...because I think his questions go for several departments, Police, Fire, Transportation that are heavily funded by grants. Is that something we can look at, Steve? Maybe compiling a list across the County? Thank you. We will get that because I think it is helpful to see all of the departments. Any other questions pertaining to operations? Go ahead Councilmember Yukimura. You look guilty every time you look at me. Ms.Yukimura: I know because you are tracking how many times I ask questions. Mr. Rapozo: She is up to seventy-eight percent (78%) of the time right now. Ms.Yukimura: But you have to judge quality. Scott if we can put slide 11 up this is your slide about total calls by year and percent of increases. Which is very educational but I have asked this question to the Police Department so do not feel like I am discriminating against you but do you analyze your calls in terms of calls that could have been prevented or calls that were false calls and look for ways that you could manage the calls better and this may be an operations question. I just want to give you an example. The example is my experience with being a parent project facilitator where you help parent learn how to handle their kids but there was one (1) community were they found that fifteen (150) families were causing sixty (60) calls a month to the Police Department because they would say "my kid stealing from me" or "he will not listen to me, come help me" and when they put these families through this parent training course it reduced the number of calls from those families to thee (3) calls a month so they found out that they could handle those number of calls from the Police Department. Now Fire is different so I just wondered. Mr. Blalock: We have a record management system that we do identify the type of calls that we go to. We do review it. We have worked with Elderly Housing as far as when we have a frequent caller, someone falling off ask for help. Maybe they can go in and help, get VA help. We are constantly looking at ways to do that. It is to better serve what we are doing. The thing is I cannot make that call until I get there because it might be the fifth time that you called and it is that time that...so we still have to respond. If we can identify a trend like that, yes we do try to call the appropriate agencies to make contact with the person and see if we can make better arrangements because it is a strain on the whole system. Ms.Yukimura: That is very good that idea of a frequent caller is like a red flag and seeing if you could address it in some other way to stop those calls or at least reduce them. That is really good. Thank you. Mr. Rapozo: Thank you. Any other questions for the administration or operations? Budget questions, no? Prevention? Who is the prevention guy? Paki, the jack of all trades. April 8, 2014 Fire Department (1m) Page 24 Mr. Vaughn: I will change my hat right now. For the record Kilipaki Vaught, Fire Chief Inspector standing in for Captain Daryl Date and Prevention Bureau. Another Fire Inspector, Ryan Washburn is back here attending. Mr. Rapozo: Go ahead. Mr. Chock: Mahalo, Kilipaki. I heard in the challenges arena again how difficult it is to keep up with the inspections but I also heard how popular and how much of advancement the Prevention Bureau has made. What a change in terms of popularity over the years. I was wondering if you would be able to share, and again you do not have to go into detail Kilipaki as this is something we could talk about as a separate issue but as it directly relates to the budget is how it is we might be able to shift that given the amount of help we have, administrative help, inspectors that we have available? It would seem to me and you could just verify this or not that there are a lot of thing s that could be more self automated or could be done externally where you folks would follow-up, look at red flags specifically or so forth. I am sure you have something. I was wondering if you could expound on that? Mr. Vaughn: Thank you for the question. The acknowledge systems and learning how to share the information between ourselves and inspection companies that do third-party inspection and through the departments it has been a huge thing in fact on June 5, 2014 we are having our first AHJ meeting and AHJ is an acronym for Authority Having Jurisdiction so as far as code enforcement the NFPA, the standards that we follow through the Hawaii Revised Statutes. The AHJ is...we take the lead in that as far as inspections and trying to follow a frequency. Currently under NFPA draf standard 1730 they breakdown the frequency of inspections on certain levels. One is if it is a high risk occupancy we try to inspect annually. Say like a public school. Our charge is to inspect the public schools, free of charge to the Department of Education every year. We also inspect the charter schools, free of charge to the Department of...the State Charter Commission. We also inspect the daycare and preschools, free of charge to the Department of Human Services, all courtesy inspections to the State of Hawaii. Those would be classified as high risk occupancies. Critical infrastructure we try to get to that every year. Other moderate risk occupancies the inspection frequency is bi-annually, so every two (2) years and low risk occupancies are tri- annually, three (3) years and this is the draft standard that is coming down probably in the next few years that we would try to follow for Fire Prevention Bureaus. Currently, in the past few years the Chief Blalock eluted to different inspections we do. Preplans are conducted by the engine companies on their day of duty. Try to get them out and understand the different target risks and hazards that are out there for them to address in case they is an event or emergency response. As far as Inspector Ryan Washburn and I we have been actively inspecting occupancies...currently we are doing a lot of commercial kitchen hoods through the whole island. We are trying to get a good grasp of that. We have put in one hundred sixty- four (164) inspections in the last two (2) months and we have really ramped up our opportunities in that area knowing there is a need. Last year we came before Council, we knew we had to address this need so we have been trying to get out there. Our focus in the past had been on education and the Sparky trailer. The Sparky trailer basically hums and it runs itself and it is really good. The encounters that we have today for the month of February are one thousand five hundred thirty-six (1,536) via the trailer. The aim is to get to about fifteen thousand (15,000) encounters by the end of the year, which is pretty doable based on our contact with the schools and through different businesses. I am not sure if I am answering the question as far as the frequency. Mr. Chock: Just further look at it in terms of how we might be able to lower the risks that are out there. The amount of calls that we get really sits in the April 8, 2014 Fire Department (lm) Page 25 future within prevention and the ability for you folks to do your work with the limited resources is really what I am concerned about. What kinds of creative things we can do to ensure that majority of the community, commercial businesses and so forth are having some sort of not only education but preventative mechanisms to safeguard future liabilities? Mr. Vaughn: Yes and building upon the preplan goal that we had in the past we are trying to identify other new fire inspectors from the line that could be able to do the job from the line and may be able to help us out in accomplishing about two thousand five hundred (2,500) business inspections a year. That would greatly help. Of course staffing is always a huge need on our part. I will let the Chiefs take care of that aspect of that but the creative part would be trying to enhance our..maybe like a web based software to help get the flow of information really working well for us. Trying to work a little bit smarter and harder at the same time. In doing that also going back and trying to train online firefighters to the level of a Certified Fire Inspector would be a...put a gigantic dent in the amount of inspections we could conduct every year. Those are a couple of the ideas that have come up so far. Mr. Chock: Thank you, Kilipaki. Mr. Rapozo: Councilmembers we are on about 11:00 a.m. we will take our caption break here. BC our ten (10) minute caption break and then we will come back and try to wrap it but before lunch with the Fire Department. There being no objections, the Committee recessed at 11:00 a.m The meeting was called back to order at 11:11 a.m., and proceeded as follows: Mr. Rapozo: We left off with prevention. Any other question on prevention? Go ahead, Councilmember Yukimura. Ms. Yukimura: On slide 11, if we can show that, you show that of the five thousand six hundred (500,600) plus calls seventy-four percent (74%) were for medical and rescue. Do you have a breakdown of how many were medical and how many were rescue? Mr. Blalock: I do not have it off hand but it is approximately seventy percent (70%) of the calls are medical calls. Ms. Yukimura: Are medical? Mr. Blalock: Yes. We can get a breakdown for you on the yearly basis. That is how we track on our record managements. Ms. Yukimura: So Kilipaki, the prevention efforts have been mainly for fire? Right, you are in business inspections and so forth and I really commend the way you have been doing it with the high priorities and your one hundred sixty-four (164)...whatever in two (2) months is really impressive to me. Have we looked at...I do not know...are any of the medical calls preventive? Are preventable, I guess. Mr. Blalock: All calls, I think to some extent are preventable. Part of the educational trailer also too is educating some of the elderly with eliminating trip hazards or hand rails and things like that so it is an all encompassing theme when we talk about community risk reduction because we really want to do things like that. That is why we say keiki to kapuna as we address these things. It is fire based per say but again we do April 8, 2014 Fire Department (lm) Page 26 look at these things and even in houses and when we go in, like I said we would call appropriate agencies to go in and assist. Ms. Yukimura: I do not think Fire Departments should feel like they should have to do it all but that is why I think there is more and more what they call partnering and so forth and there is this big community health effort now that Dr. Bal and maybe you are involved with that Kilipaki, Dr. Bal and Kathy Clark are heading. I remember in Seattle in one point they made it a goal to train enough citizens so that...they wanted to train twenty-five percent (25%) of their citizens in CPR so that if you were among four (4) people and you got a heart attack that the chances are that somebody that was not you knew CPR. I have heard of community efforts like that and so I am not asking that Fire Department do it all but I think the kind of analysis and then if this group is looking at community health maybe that is one of the issues that can be raised...that would be a way to drop some calls or at least the rate of increase. Mr. Blalock: Good points that you are making and I guess Seattle was kind of the model when you talk about the chain of survival. All these links that you need to get to survive a heart attack. We do have firefighters that even off duty they are trained in CPR so they have been training smaller businesses and things like that. It is not a blind to that area per say. We do address it not on a program per say in the Fire Department itself. Ms. Yukimura: So when you look at your calls there are three (3) categories, unless I am mistaken here. One is fire, one is medical and one is rescue. Are the basically the three (3) kinds of calls that the Fire Department response to? Mr. Blalock: In a general sense yes. We actually...because of (inaudible) we will actually be more specific on the type of call itself in what we are going to...whether it is an assist, whether it is CPR occurring, whether it is rescue. Even in the medical but we do identify these things in the RMFs. Ms. Yukimura: Over here you have that fifty-four (54) calls require extensive search by sea and air. I do not think that is all your rescue calls. Those are the big ones and then twenty-seven (27) calls require I guess that means Fire Department in watercraft or heavy surf. Mr. Blalock: And that is dealing with our Ocean Safety Bureau so, again they are part of our department. Ms. Yukimura: Could, as a follow-up I would like to see the rate of increase in those three (3) different categories. If there is a rate of increase in fire, a rate of increase in rescue, and a rate of increase in medical. My interest is which one is increasing more which would allow you to see what might be coming up in the future. I do not expect an answer now but as a follow-up. Thank you. Mr. Rapozo: Thank you. Any more questions of preventions? I like the trailer, by the way. The Sparky trailer. It is a great tool, great investment I think. Very educational. Mr. Vaughn: That came by our Fire Prevention Safety grant. We were lucky cap wise on that. Thank you. April 8, 2014 Fire Department (lm) Page 27 Mr. Rapozo: Thank you. Okay, training...oh, Chief, go ahead. Do you have something. Training. Any questions for training? Mike, do you want to give a brief overview of anything we should know about or any issues that...? MIKE SCOVEL, Training Captain:The swift water training, we are waiting for the equipment to arrive and then we will begin the swift water training. We have the Standard Operating Guidelines (SOG) in the process of being written up and the training is pretty much set. Mr. Rapozo: Okay, Councilmember Yukimur. Ms. Yukimura: I just want to say, like yesterday's rescue was a testimony to the training that you give your officers and you see how critical it is when you get these rescues so thank you for your work. Mr. Rapozo: Thank you. Any other questions? If not, thank you very much, Mike. Mr. Scovel: Thank you. Mr. Rapozo: And Ocean Safety...yes he got off easy. How do you scrutinize training really? No, you cannot have training. Now this is the one. Kalani, you want to start off with a brief, maybe some highlights, overview, some... KALANI VIERRA, Ocean Safety Bureau: As the Chief mentioned our Junior Lifeguard Program, we are expanding this year. Last year we took a bunch of kids to Maui and we got our tenth consecutive State Championship. After that we took a group of twenty-one (21) kids to the nationals in Huntington Beach. We got awarded three (3) national champions and we also came home with about seventeen (17) medals. This year we are expanding our keiki program. Last year we had three (3) locations, kids 8— 12. This is kind of our third year with the younger kids. We are expanding to four (4) locations this year. We still have five (5) locations for your juniors 13 — 17. I think it is a big interest with the kids 8 — 12. Last year we had to turn kids away because it was so high demand that we did not have enough instructors to do with the juniors and the keikis at the same time so we added another location. This year we are taking fifty (50) kids for each location. We are having the State Championships here in August. It is going to be down here at Kalapaiki. We will be holding the State Junior Lifeguard Championships the same time we were hosting the State Drowning Prevention Conference. So we will hosting the conference at the Marriott, Thursday and Friday. Then our State Championships will be on Saturday. We have forty-five (45) full time positions. We have seven (7) part time positions. Some are vacant we are on the verge of filling them as we speak. We did some agility test and interviews for the lifeguard part time positions. Our equipment is handling okay. We have been doing a lot of preventions in the past so we are trying to beef up our education process. As you can see we had our video up and running. We are doing a variety of other things like the kiosk, like the Chief mentioned, the rescue tube program, working with the Kaua`i Lifeguard Association and Monty Downs. Our signs, our signage program we are trying to get a hands on our sign program at our County beach parks as you see. We have some protection by having those signs placed at our County beach parks so we are on the verge of getting all our equipment and the proper materials and we are going to start from the Westside and head all the way to the North and start replacing all of those signs but other than that I am open for questions. Mr. Rapozo: Any questions? Councilmember Yukimura. April 8, 2014 Fire Department (lm) Page 28 Ms. Yukimura: Kalani, thank you for your great division and your work that you and they do. Your junior lifeguard program seems to me like a really great prevention program because you are training the kids that you do train about water safety but then they are around to help and I was interested in your drowning prevention. There is a program that you do there or you talked about the State Championships and the drowning prevention? Mr. Vierra: Yes, I talked about the Drowning Prevention Conference. It is an annual conference that goes from island to island each year and this year Kaua`i is hosting the conference and the State Junior Lifeguard Champions together. Ms. Yukimura: So what are the ways that this group is preventing drowning? Mr. Vierra: Different organizations from around the State come together. Different non-profit organization, anything pertaining to water safety or ocean safety that could help reduce the drowning rates in the State of Hawai`i. We come together and we try to be creative and see what we can do better to serve the State of Hawai`i. A lot of people say that Kaua`i is kind of the leading model in the State because the amount things we do here and it is kind of branching off and they are following our lead on going to the outer islands like our video for example. Ms. Yukimura: The thing that is really impressive about your program is the really effective partnerships you have, like the North Shore Rotary, Dr. Downs and your...what is the group that puts on the concerts? Mr. Vierra: Yes, we work closely with different partners around the island. Kauai Lifeguard Association and Monty Downs, as we all know, he is our number 1 fan and he is the President of the Kaua`i Lifeguard Association. So he really helps us out with fundraising and the education side and helps us try to implement different programs. The Kaua`i Visitors Bureau, Sue Kanoho and her support with our ocean safety efforts. All the Rotary Clubs around the island, they helped us with some of our facilities at the Hanalei base yard and at the Koloa Fire Station area. They helped with raising funds for the video at the airport. A lot of these different organizations they really supportive with the ocean safety efforts. Ms. Yukimura: Do you know how the video is working? Have you gotten feedback about it? Mr. Vierra: I was just talking to Councilmember Kagawa about when I fly I try to hide on the side and see how many people are watching. There are a few, most of them are kind of worried about getting their bags but we are trying to implement a survey and we wanted to go to different beach parks and set up a table with our tent and have a little survey and just ask random visitors and ask them did you see the video? What did you think about the video? Did you see the signs or how did you get your information on ocean safety? And we wanted to do a survey and see what kind of input we have and see how effective it is because if it is not effective we might have to change locations or whatever or how can we make our efforts better? Ms. Yukimura: I am so glad that you are doing that kind of evaluation. I mean a lot of times we do something and then we just do not check back. April 8, 2014 Fire Department (lm) Page 29 Mr. Vierra: And it will even help our bureau out because then it might give us really good ideas on how we can serve them better and maybe they can give us an idea that we are not working on that might be good. Ms. Yukimura: This idea has been...what I am going to say is it has been around for a long time this idea of showing the videos in the incoming flights to Kauai. That would seem to be the best when people are not looking for their luggage. They are a captive audience and just like they do all of the preliminary safety discussion in the plane it seems like it fits right in that category. Mr. Vierra: Yes, we have been fighting that issue for twenty (20) years or so especially with Monty. By getting the video at the airport I think that was the easiest way besides getting it on the airlines. As soon as they get off but again we will still try with the airlines. I am not sure how we can crack that nut but we are still plugging away. Ms. Yukimura: I think I am going to resurrect the resolution that we did a while back. Last question, on your drownings I know you do an analysis who are visitors and who are residents, right and was that in this year's presentation? Mr. Vierra: I do not believe so. Ms. Yukimura: Can you provide that. Mr. Vierra: Yes we can. Ms. Yukimura: Maybe for the last five (5) years, what the percentage was on the average or whatever visitors and residents. Do you do an analysis of how many were preventable? Like some of them are people having heart attacks in the water and maybe it was just a coincident that they were in the water at that time but others they did not get enough warning or whatever, those are more preventable. Do you have an analysis of that? Mr. Vierra: We have enough stats that we could come up a analysis but I think all drownings are preventable whether it is at a beach or whatever but we can work on something because I have of all the drownings, where, what gender, visitor or resident, what kind of activity they were doing. As far as the medical side that would be hard for us to come up with an analysis unless we have some kind of help from the Department of Health or some kind of medical expertise because according to the doctors if they have a heart attack in the ocean, they swallow water that would be consider a drowning. We try to work with at our conferences about trying to get the Department of Health onboard and trying to help us identify drowning is the primary or the secondary. We are still working on that because it is still kind of hard when we have a lot of elderly or unhealthy people in the water, in the flats and they drown so we are still working on that. I know it is kind of hard to identify. Ms. Yukimura: Well it sounds like you have a good statistics so whatever you can give us in terms of an analysis of preventable...well you said everyone is preventable but I am just asking for some data to see what the issues are. Mr. Vierra: We have data all the way back to 1970 I believe. Ms. Yukimura: Okay, thank you. April 8, 2014 Fire Department (lm) Page 30 Mr. Rapozo: Thank you. I have a follow-up really quick before Mr. Kagawa. We do not pay anything for the airport video? Mr. Vierra: No. Mr. Rapozo: Partner with the State. Mr. Vierra: That was all raised money with the agreement with the airport and the funding was raised by the Rotary Club and the Kaua`i Lifeguard Association. Mr. Rapozo: To produce the video, that funding is what you are talking about? Mr. Vierra: Yes. Mr. Rapozo: The thing in the airplane about the safety stuff, how many people do you think watch that? Not too many. Same thing, they may watch it once or they are so use to watching it in Hawaiian Airlines that you get up to the video... Mr. Vierra: Unless the stewardess is pretty. Mr. Rapozo: You heard that? That was classic. I watch that too and you watch people they are with their Ipads, they read a book and they are not paying any attention to that because they see it so many times. Mr. Blalock: That is a good point. The social media stuff, originally when we kind of looked at that prevention of drownings and how do we get the message out, educate, educate, educate. That was one of the bigger things, this is a captive audience but like you said now a day everybody is doing their own thing so we even heard that you have to go one step further where you go into where they are planning their...whether it is kayaking or those kinds of stuffs. Mr. Rapozo: Ipads, I think we can have IT just hack their ipad. How much would it cost to put a segment on the airlines? I mean is that something...if we paid them they would be willing to put it on, I am sure. Mr. Vierra: A few years ago a private company, Olukai had this video on an incoming flight from the mainland and they showed a lot of our junior lifeguard program and they had some ocean safety tips. I heard they had connections with some owner or some kind of management of how they got it in there. They had it up for a good month and I was kind of stoked hopefully it would branch out but it kind of just went dead after they took it out. I am not sure how much it would cost or what the process is on who we have to talk to to get it onboard. Maybe the Visitors Bureau could be much help in that field. Mr. Rapozo: You had a resolution at one point? Ms. Yukimura: Yes. Mr. Rapozo: Well maybe we can resurrect it. I think that is important because I think... April 8, 2014 Fire Department (lm) Page 31 Mr. Vierra: Even if we can get out beach safety guides in the pocket in front it might be a little help. Mr. Rapozo: I know that, because like you I watch when I am at the baggage claim and I see there are a few people that actually watch it and I know that it works. That is the only thing, you do not know who you have saved, if you saved them, if they have not stepped foot in the beach. You do not know that but I have to believe especially the ones with kids, with children, that are travelling with their children and they watch that all of a sudden it brings this awareness and it is not a secret that I work at the hotel part time and a lot of people ask me where is the safe beaches and they will go but I will tell you with your most recent rescue at Hanakapi`ai four (4) of the guest at the hotel were told, specifically told after they asked if it was safe to go hiking were told no, not during the rain and they went. You can only help the ones that are willing and interesting, interesting phenomenon with tourist because they want to see it. They have this many days to do this many things and that is the day we scheduled whether it is the beach or the trail they are going to do it but it are the ones that we do not know because they saw the video or they were told by one of your lifeguards not to go in the water that you technically saved their life but there is no way that you can track that. Mr. Vierra: Yes, so I think that by performing this survey that I talked about we might have some kind of idea on how effective our message is getting out. Mr. Rapozo: Thank you. Mr. Kagawa. Mr. Kagawa: Thank you, Chair. Kalani, I had a chance to talk to you about some of the pressing needs that maybe have arisen and we talked about Brennecke's a little bit. If you can kind of share with us how we address that increase in (inaudible). Mr. Vierra: Brennecke's, I am not sure if you all know where Brennecke's is but it is a popular bodysurfing or body boarding wave at Poipu Beach Park and the sand has come back and it is really nice for all levels to go and bodysurf and boogie board, it is fairly shallow. We have been having a lot of injuries lately, the past couple of years, either by neck injuries, head injuries, or spinal injuries because they do not know how to ride the wave or maybe they hit their head on the shore break or what have you but we have been doing more patrols to Brennecke's from our tower at Poipu Beach but we are kind of looking at down the line that might want to be one of our beaches that we might want to put a tower there and staff...expand our service to the Brennecke beach area. There are other beaches we are looking at but due to the amount of injuries that are happening there I think that would be an area that we might want to look at in the future. Mr. Kagawa: Thank you. So right now we kind of... Mr. Vierra: We just monitor just by roving periodically. Mr. Kagawa: So if we needed to step that up in that area, what would that entail? Another two (2) positions, a tower... Mr. Vierra: A tower for sure. If we can get a tower and a few positions or...I do not know if our budget would allow us to get more positions. I know getting more positions is kind of the sensitive topic but half time positions or whatever manpower positions we can help to help cover. April 8, 2014 Fire Department (lm) Page 32 Mr. Kagawa: I remember when all of us were young and that was the most popular place to go and all of us we all ate it then. We when through that washing machine at the end of the wave so I think at some point if a lot of people, kids, our youth are going back there I think at some point we just have to bite the bullet and do it. Thank you. Last question I had about I remember at one point the Kekaha lifeguard tower was in jeopardy because of the erosion? Mr. Vierra: That is all cleared. Mr. Kagawa: All cleared? Mr. Vierra: Our lifeguard tower was located on the rock wall and we were in violation of the Army Core of Engineers because if there were a tsunami or a tidal wave and the wall blew out the public would not be liable for State funding because we have a lifeguard tower on the stonewall. So we had to move it. A few years ago when it started eroding we had to move it because we probably would have lost the tower so we moved it into the County beach park, Lucy Wright part, I believe and it is located in the beach park now. That is a County Beach Park so we are not even dealing with the Army Core and being in any type of violation of... Mr. Kagawa: Just compliments to you in managing your staff. I think for me the first time I saw that at the airport, arriving I was totally impressed because it was loud, it sent that message that beware as you arrive and I think it has been effective without even gathering any feedback from the tourist because I think you cannot help but at least hear and see you up there warning the tourist. I thing that is a great step that you took for them and any future things that we do can only help even more because really the tourist, if they come, they could be on a return visit but the currents are mean even on Oahu but Kaua`i is pretty mean, I know. Even us that know how to swim we can drown too. Mahalo. Mr. Vierra: Thank you. Mr. Rapozo: Thank you. The tower is at McArthur Park? Mr. Vierra: I mean McArthur Park, I am sorry. Mr. Rapozo: I was thinking, you did not move it again to Lucy Wright Park? I think we all had near death experiences at Brennecke's when we were growing up. That first when you cannot breath and you think you are gone and then you (inaudible) what a feeling. What a great feeling when you come out of that water. Any other questions for water safety? Councilmember Yukimura. Ms. Yukimura: At Brennecke's I have looked with the department at a satellite station. Is that not a smaller... Mr. Vierra: It is a smaller tower. It is not big four-man tower but you can have one or two personnel in the tower. Ms. Yukimura: And then you can coordinate with the large tower at the park itself, right? So that could be at least a beginning. Mr. Vierra: Yes. April 8, 2014 Fire Department (lm) Page 33 Ms. Yukimura: We have all been fighting to get the tourist tax here. That extra money would help us do things like that because it is really tourist related so that is why we are fighting so hard for it because it gives us more options to serve the tourist. Mr. Rapozo: Would it be possible to get us a report on the injuries? I am kind of really concerned on that. Mr. Vierra: Yes. Mr. Rapozo: Over the last whenever you guys started keeping track at Brennecke's. Just Brennecke's, I am more concerned about Brennecke's. Mr. Vierra: I think I just did some paperwork in the past few days and I think we had two (2) injuries in the last month at Brennecke's. Mr. Rapozo: And it is the head, neck, spine? Mr. Vierra: Yes. Mr. Rapozo: Okay, thank you. Any more questions for Kalani, for water safety? Thank you very much, Kalani. I appreciate what you do. I had the pleasure of representing the Council at the Junior Lifeguard awards banquet last year and what a sight to see. It is just phenomenal what you folks have done and Kalani you and your crew have done with that program and to see the kids there and at the event, sharing their stories is just unbelievable and you talk about a return on investment. It is a very small investment and these that turn into young adults and then adults. The amount of people they reach out to and share their knowledge I think is well worth the investment and thank you very much, Kalani and everybody who participates. Any other questions for the Chief? Thank you, Chief. Good job. I told your Chief that I would give you a hard time but you just did such a good job I could not...I do not have the heart to do it plus I still have a plugged toilet that I have to get to. Mr. Chair, would you like me to turn it back to you. I talked to Scott, the Police Department is set for 1:30 p.m. it is probably best we just break till 1:30 p.m.? Chair Furfaro: I would suggest that we break and come back for the Police at 1:30 p.m. and before we close I would just thank you, Mr. Rapozo and again thank you for everything you folks did in the last in the last thirty-six (36) hours up at the north shore. I look forward to that task force in your committee and we will come back on that but as always you folks make us proud so thank you very much for your budge discussion today but I think we will break till 1:30 p.m. There being no objections, the Committee recessed at 11:42 a.m.