June 24, 2026 – Personnel Board – Video & Transcript
June 24, 2026 - Personnel Board
I will call the personnel board meeting of June 24th to order at 4.04 p.m.
Is that what everybody else has?
This meeting is by remote access only, but it is available to the public.
And the public can get to the meeting on the link that can be found at https colon slash slash www.wayland.ma.us slash 1097 slash public dash body dash meeting dash information dash remote.
Um, and, uh, pursuant to chapter two of the acts of 2025, the meeting will be conducted by remote access.
Uh, people may, uh, may participate remotely and also we will have a time for, uh, public comment.
Um, and, uh, when required, when required by law or allowed by the chair, and it will be allowed by the chair,
persons wishing to provide public comment or otherwise participate in the meeting may do so at the, at the meeting location, uh, the remote location, public comment.
It is advised being, uh, limited to two minutes per person.
Uh, I will, uh, read the agenda for the public.
Uh, first of all, uh, who we have in the room are, uh, personnel board members, Paul Warrenberg, Dave Williams, Marianne Peabody.
We're expecting Jill Zukerman, so, um, I'm, I'm expecting that she will come and Marianne, Marianne, Marianne, Marianne Stagnall will not be with us today.
Um, and I'm going to read the agenda for the public, um, uh, first call to order, then a discussion and review of the fire staffing study.
And fire chief Neil McPherson is with us to, um, to, um, uh, to talk about the study.
We also have in the room with us our HR director, Kate Ryan, and we also have Robbie Bullard as the Zoom meeting manager.
And I am getting her picture on my computer again, but not even on my own internet.
That's weird. Um, and then we'll have discussion and possible vote, uh, to create a personnel board working group to review and propose revisions to personnel policies, which were the suggestion by Paul Warrenburn.
Uh, and then we will have a discussion and possible vote to recommend changes to the non-union annual leave policy, policy number M4, uh, 1.2.
That we will have a discussion and approval of open session meetings of, we have three, two, 26.
Are any of the other ones there, Kate, or is that the only, that's the only one that we have, okay, that's the set we have available.
And then we'll set the next meeting date and we will answer into executive session.
Um, oh, hi, Bill.
Yeah, Jill has arrived at 4.07.
Can you hear me?
Yes.
Yep.
Yeah.
I can't hear you guys.
I'm sorry.
Hold on one second.
I'm so sorry.
Okay. You're still here. Yeah. Okay. Thank you. I'm sorry. Um, and then we, um, before, before we go into executive session, we will have, um, anything that, uh, has occurred within, you know, less than 24 hours notice, uh, that announcements, um, the, um, we don't have announcements on our agenda. So we need to put announcements on our agenda. Uh, uh, I would like to, um, uh, announce, um, on behalf of the board members. So we want to thank, um, um, uh, for her years of service. Um, I don't know how many years she's been on the board, Katie. What is it, six? Um, five. The terms were five years. Okay. Yeah. I think that, I think she started prior to, oh, yeah, I think at the time it was, uh, she was, she had been on for a year. So I think she's, um, served for six years. Uh, the next, um, and, and so I appreciate, and we all appreciate her, her participation. Um, and the next item is discussion and review of the fire staffing study, which was on the website, which I hope most of us have read. I've read it. And, um, and, um, Chief McPherson has agreed to, um, to, uh, to lead a discussion and tell us a bit about the fire staffing study and one of the recommendations. Chief? Okay. Can everyone hear me okay? Mm-hmm. Okay. Awesome. So I'm going to start, I don't know if you saw the presentation I made to the select board, just talking a little bit about the study itself, and then I'll get into some details. And if you have questions, just let me know. But I just want to start high level is obviously we had a fire department staffing study. It was fun. The funding was approved at 2024 town meeting. It was conducted by MRI, which is municipal resources, and they are a third party vendor that was hired by the town to do this. And this was a competitive bid process in terms of their selection that it took a period of time to get the study completed, but it was done in March of 2026. I hope everybody took the opportunity to read all 104 pages of said study. I know it's a thrilling reading for you, but their study did come up with 35 recommendations. And if you haven't seen, I think all you've seen, it's also available for anybody else who might be listening on the fire department's website, on the main page for the fire department, because we want to make sure that people could find that and look at that. And, you know, I think high level, and I'll get more detail after this, but I think there was a paragraph in this report that I think was very relevant and helped summarize, I think, the findings. And it's difficult, we're not going to have time today to go through, of course, 35 recommendations, but the conclusion was the data and observations presented in this report make clear that the department is operating near the limits of its current staffing and deployment model. Continued growth in EMS demand, increasing call concurrency, and rising operational complexity, place sustained pressure on the personnel and resources. Without strategic adjustments, these pressures may erode response reliability, increase fatigue and burnout, and heighten operational risk. So that was, I think, a high level paragraph that kind of summarized a lot of the findings and recommendations. So it's great that we've done this study, but the next question people have is, okay, so what are the next steps? I know that the select board has agreed to form a working group. There was a recommendation for the composition of that working group, and that included fire chief, assistant chief, a member from the fire department, a union representative or designee, a select board designee, a finance committee designee, I believe there was somebody from human resources or personnel, and a citizen from the community. And we're going to use a working group to go through the recommendations to help us prioritize and evaluate these recommendations so that we can report back to the select board and the appropriate boards with a list of prioritized recommendations. So I'll stop there for a second, see if there's any questions, and I can give you a little bit more detail if you would like. Okay, I did forget to ask for any public comments. So Ravi, if there's anybody who has any questions of the chief right now in the public who wants to ask some questions, are there anybody? I see no attendees right now. Great, thank you. So questions from the personnel board regarding the study or any questions people have? Yeah, well, I'll start with a comment. I thought the survey, the study was pretty impressive overall, very thorough, and I think it points to a very high level of performance by the fire department, which is, you know, I think we all as residents believe that, but it's nice to see an independent expert confirm that. I guess this is both a comment and a question. It struck me that a lot of the pressure in terms of staffing and call response time is due to an increase in EMS calls and particularly around assisted living. And that's, you know, while the assisted living beds or residents seem like it's around 400 to 450 people, there seem to be accounting for nearly, you know, 25 to 30 percent, I don't have the report in front of me, of the EMS calls, which is quite burdensome. And, and I just want to, Chief, I wanted your thoughts about that and, you know, what you see as, you know, the, as the solution. Yeah, sure. So, I mean, high level, I think that the town has actually had some meaningful growth, right, in terms of the risk and hazard profile. And one of those changes was, in fact, assisted living. And the statistic is actually 30 percent of our EMS call volume is to those communities. And what I would point out is over a period of 25 years, there honestly was not a lot of changes to the fire department staffing, but yet we ended up with three additional assisted living facilities. And they all came at different times. And eventually, I think today, you know, we have made some investment in the fire department over the last 10 years. And I want to thank everybody in town for supporting us from capital expenditures and also staffing, because we have actually added an assistant chief in 2016. In 2019, we added two firefighter paramedic positions. And then in 21, I got a safer grant for two more people. So, over the past 10 years, we've added some staff. But over the past 25 years, when you had tremendous call volume growth and we put in assisted living, I don't think we understood what the impact would be. And now they are significant contributors, right, to our EMS call volume. And EMS call volume is what drives, obviously, a lot of the total volume for our department. The question I had about that, Chief, too, was when it was first decided that we would move from a fire department that was mainly firefighters to those that would have capabilities of being EMTs and staffing the ambulances, that there was a – the fire chief had said it would be good income for the town. So, that when we go to the assisted living facilities, those are presumably calls that are paid for by either families or insurance, et cetera. But what is the – what's the distinction – I mean, not the distinction, but how much – how much money do we get from the calls versus the cost of manning the ambulances? Because they recommended a second ambulance, and I know that there's the possibility of getting private ambulance service, which we probably have to use a fair amount of the time to add to our own capability. But what's the – what is – what do those numbers look like? Okay. So, I'll start at high level and just say to you that if we are fully staffed, we can actually run two ambulances, and we do collect revenue, right, when people have insurance. And I want to emphasize to anybody in the public, never hesitate to call us, all right, because you're concerned about a financial burden, because we don't charge people unless they transport. And we typically – if you don't have insurance and can't afford to pay for an ambulance ride, then typically there's ways to work that out. So, having said that, there is private insurance, and there is MassHealth, Medicare, Medicaid, all right? Right. Private insurance pays significantly higher rates for us. And, in fact, the majority of the $800,000 we get in ambulance revenue every year, the majority of that comes from a smaller percentage of people, but yet we get greater reimbursement for private insurance. So, when we talk about MassHealth, Medicare, Medicaid, they pay significantly less when we do a transport. So, yes, it's absolutely correct that for the assisted living that we do receive some reimbursement as negotiated with our ambulance company and whatever the insurance would be. I would suggest to you that those transports are typically not transports where we're actually making money, and our goal is not to make money, but we typically lose money on those calls in the sense that our cost of service is higher than the cost that we are receiving back from those insurance companies. So, in some cases, we'll receive back $300 for an ambulance transport for a Medicare, Medicaid, or MassHealth patient. So, again, we're not in the business of trying to make money, but from a reimbursement standpoint, the significant difference is private pay versus some of the other insurance companies and sources. So, you're in the same position as all of health care today with the Medicare, the Medicaid payments being substantially lower than cost. Well, I would just say that, obviously, there's a bigger picture dynamic, which is all of our costs have gone up significantly. Personally, personnel costs, material costs, vehicle costs have increased. The Medicare, Medicaid, and private health care reimbursement rates have really not kept up with what our cost structure is. Actually, we're not seeing – $800,000 is great, and I'm glad that we can bring that back to the town. But in terms of our costs have increased faster than our reimbursements with insurance companies.
Okay. And if we're fully staffed, we do have the capability of two ambulances? We do, if we are running at seven. Okay. The reality is that the vast majority of the time, we are running at five people because contractual sick time, location time, sometimes people get time off, and other challenges. So, we run at five people. I think the statistic is 73% of the time. And the challenge with that is our ambulance is frequently out and transporting patients, so they're out of town. So, if we have five people and two are on the ambulance, we have three people left in town. Now, during the day, the assistant chief and myself are typically in town, but we also go to meetings and we also have other responsibilities. So, in some cases, after hours, you have three people left in town, right? And that's one of the big concerns and one of the recommendations that was made by this group was, instead of dropping to five, that we should increase the staffing to six, so that we can comply with some of the NFPA standards or better comply with it more often. And, number two, there's this rule that OSHA put out, which is two in and two out. And you're very simply supposed to have two people outside of a structure when you send two people in for safety purposes. So, if we have three people left in town, we're not always able to meet the OSHA two in, two out. Now, we are very aggressive with mutual aid because we depend upon mutual aid and they depend upon us. So, for any type of fire call and even big structures, we have automatic responses coming to us. But just remember, with some of those responses, they're coming from another community. So, it's going to take them a little bit longer to get there. So, I think those were some of the points that you probably saw as part of, certainly, the study that was done. Yes. Anybody else have any questions? Dave? I do, but I think I'll let the chief continue before I ask those questions. I'll answer probably a little bit further on regards to staffing. Okay. Okay. So, just a couple other things that I wanted to cover that I think are important is, you know, we talked briefly about the community risk and hazard profile. And I'd ask you just to think about in, you know, 25 years ago, what your average house looked like in Weyland compared to today. And our single biggest exposure is actually a single family house at night with people in the house, right, with no sprinkler system. And the report kind of called it out. But what's really important to remember is, if we think about the size and types of structures that we now have in Weyland, Weyland has changed over the past 25 years. And we talked about the assisted living. And we talked about the size of those buildings. We talked about the residents in the buildings. But we also have added a whole bunch of large residential apartment buildings. And I'm going to just use the example, there is a number of buildings that were built on Boston Post Road. And we talk about staffing. If we have someone who left a pizza box on their stove, and that's happened a number of times, that building is so large. Even if we show up with five people, we're typically striking a working fire assignment, which brings us two to three additional engine companies for mutual aid resources to evacuate the smoke from the building just because of the size of that structure. So when we think about this, we've added a number of large residential projects with lightweight construction, which make it much harder for us to get in the buildings, right, because of just the size of them, but also to be effective with our operations. We also have a number of schools, right, and there's a number of schools that have been built and are in process of being built within the community, right, which creates additional exposures. And these are all high hazard exposures for us. I also just want to remind people, what's changed in the fire service, and this is noted in the report, is, you know, some of the other risks that we face, and that includes lightweight construction, right? Lightweight construction burns and collapses much more quickly than some of your traditional construction types. Electric vehicles, right, electric vehicles, we've had a number of electric vehicle fires, and lithium-iron battery fires have become much more a normal occurrence, right? Not necessarily a good thing, but they are very labor, water, and time intensive, right? We also have energy storage systems. So some of the size and types of exposures that we're facing today have changed, and they're going to continue to change as we have a number of projects, you know, in the future. So we're playing a little bit of catch-up. So we already talked about 30% of our EMS call is to the assisted living communities. And when we look at, you know, one of the trends that concerns me most is the multiple calls. So what we've seen over the past five years is more and more calls occurring at the same time. So it's not totally unheard of, you know, I think the numbers, I don't have them in front of me, but to have two calls, I mean, I think that happened 216 times where we're getting two calls at a time. Sometimes we get three, and that happens also. So you can imagine with sometimes only three people in town because they're already doing a transport, and we get multiple calls, it's hard for us to provide the same level of service, right, that I think the residents expect. And I want to compliment the firefighters because I tell you, day in and day out, they do some pretty amazing work, and we work at the paramedic level. And we're able to do a lot of amazing things for the residents there. And to me, I think the town's going to have to make a decision as we look at these recommendations, and we talk about what is the right level of service for this community, and what people expect. And then, obviously, whatever that right level of service is going to be, there may be a cost associated with that, right, if we choose to change staffing. So, you know, I think that's some of the messaging. And again, I want to recognize the town has invested over the past 10 years, but before that, there was not a lot of investment. And I would say in hindsight, probably this should have been addressed many years ago and continually addressed, but now we're at the place where we have an independent organization who looked at this, who does a lot of these studies, saying there's a number of things that you really should look at and try to address. So I think we have a good mechanism in place, as I mentioned, to take what we have for a study, look at these recommendations, prioritize these studies, these recommendations. Some of them may be additive, and some of them may incorporate us changing the way we do things. And I think there's some of those that are very important for us as well. So I'm going to stop there and open it back up in case you have questions, because I know I've just thrown a lot at you. Dave, do you have a question that you want to ask? Yeah, well, I guess I can ask it now. As regards to retention, is that something that it's okay if I ask about that now? Yeah. Yeah. Okay, sure. So I saw the retention numbers. I think that was something over the last five years that it increased. And I was curious from your – there was some information from the third party. But, Chief, from your standpoint, do you have a sense of why you think there's been an increase in retention over the last five years? Well, I would say, again, I think they said that we had above-average retention, and I'm proud of the retention, but I think it's something the town has to consistently work at. I know over the past couple of years, there has been some increased numbers, but some of that has been, what shall we say, individuals leaving because there was not a good fit in the community. So I can say to you that, like, four of the people over the past five years have been individuals that we hired from other departments where there just wasn't a good fit, and they chose to step down. But I think it's a challenge in this day and age because, you know, it's a highly competitive market to find paramedics, and that's what we look to hire. It's competitive from a wage perspective. It's competitive from a condition standpoint. And if you're a paramedic with your – and you've gone to the full-time fire academy, you can pick where you want to go in this state because everybody is looking for them. So I would just say, to me, that becomes what I consider to be an ongoing challenge that we have to manage carefully because we've had good results, and that was, I think, documented in the study. But I don't take that for granted, right? We have to continue to work on that, and we're going to lose really awesome people who provide a very high level of service. Do we lose people because there's no place for them to be promoted to? That there should be probably some people who leave because of that, because there's no room for growth because we're a small department. What I would say is over the past five years, you know, just if I had to make a couple comments. Number one, again, some of it was there wasn't a good fit, and people resigned. Number two, sometimes people want something bigger than Wayland. So we've lost a number of people to Marlboro and Cambridge. Now, that's a financial incentive, but it's also because in those communities, they don't have to operate on an ambulance, and the bulk of our work is ambulance work. So if you go to Cambridge, you make a lot of money, and you don't work on the ambulance, right? And I think we've had a number of just straight retirements of some really experienced people. So the good news is we have had some opportunities from a leadership standpoint, and we have one captain who has told me he's retiring, I think, in July, so there'll be a little bit more opportunity. But I do worry about that, Marianne, as we go forward, because now we have a pretty group of, or a reasonably stable group of officers, and we have a lot of newer people, right? I think if you read the study, it also talks, though, about potentially looking at kind of the officer core and how they're used. And I think there's some other opportunities and things we could do to help give opportunities to some of those other people who will be future officers. But so far, that has not been the biggest driver of losing people. I'm sorry, Dave, I stepped on you. So you had an add-on to that question for the chief. No, that's okay. Yeah, so the people that have left over the last couple of years, so they're more newer hires. They're not as much tenured staff members. There are people that you had mentioned came from one department to us. Would you say that the tenure of those having left were fairly new hires, as in people that have been with the department less than three years? So I would say that two groupings, again, retirees, people retiring with many, many years of experience, and finally decided to retire. And the other group was new people who were less than a year, probationary department members. And within the first 12 months, they were probationary members. And things did not work out. So conversations were had with some of those, or in some cases, people chose to leave within their first year because it just was not a good fit.
Okay. And how did the numbers from – there wasn't anything in the study, but from your perspective, how do our numbers of retention compare to our neighboring towns? Or, from your perspective, and the firefighting community, how we compare nationally? Yeah. Is this a trend? There was a section in here that did actually address that. And I think if you turn to page – oh, where is it? It's – okay. It's page 81. And I think they – okay. So the way the fire department has maintained a relatively high retention rate over the past several years with a peak of 100% in 2019. So I would say that our retention rate has actually been pretty good. And just as this study says, relatively high retention rate, which, again, is difficult in this marketplace because paramedics and many of the people we are hiring do not live in Weyland. They live long distances. They didn't grow up in Weyland. There's not the same connectivity. So I'm proud of the results we have. And I think it's a tribute to the men and women and the officers we have and the support that town has given them so far. So I think we have above-average retention. And I think this report kind of illustrates that as well.
Thank you. Do you have any questions? Bill, do you have any questions? Yeah, I was unmuting myself. I'm sorry. I didn't have any questions. I thought the study was very comprehensive and well done and well laid out. It was very easy to understand, and I loved the summary at the end of every section of the recommendations. Paul, do you have any other questions? Yeah, is there, has the, did the study or has the department considered hiring paramedics who are not firefighters to address more of the EMS workload and to allow firefighters to be freed up to do firefighting and fire prevention? Yep. So one of the recommendations, and we refer to that, today we operate on the ambulance with two paramedics at all times. And many other towns, Natick, Framingham, I know Concord is just about to go there too as well, operate with a paramedic and a basic EMT. So if it's an advanced level care, the paramedic will render care, and if we need a second paramedic, typically we have enough paramedics, so they have enough paramedics where they can pull a second medic off the engine to assist with the transport. So one of the recommendations in this report was that we look at running a PB model, which would allow us to hire basic EMTs to work on the EMS with a paramedic, right? And I think there was a much greater, what should we say, labor pool when we talk about basic EMTs compared to paramedics. It is the paramedic pool that is so short right now. So I do think when we talk about operational changes, a serious conversation has to be had about that because I believe it's like 60% of our calls, the various from year to year, are actually ALS calls and 40% are BLS calls, right? And a lot of those ALS calls are more simple ALS calls, where probably one medic could handle that. But that's something we want to work with a union on to find out how we can do that and be successful and look at that, at least. Again, as part of this study, that is one of the recommendations. And then my last question is, I assume this was beyond the scope of the study, but they didn't look at any staffing issues around injured on duty issues because that's become a persistent issue for us. I don't know if that was outside of their charge, but any thoughts about that? What I would say is I don't think they went into great detail about IOD. And, you know, I do believe that that is a challenge that this town is facing right now, which could impact certainly our ability to retain people and how the town is viewed. So I think that obviously it would be in the town's best interest to continue to work to resolve and maybe figure out a better way to address some of those. But the study did not go into great depth relative to those statistics. Anyone else? Well, just to follow up, is there an opportunity either through this vendor or through the working group to maybe look at IOD best practices in similar communities? Yeah, Paul, my hope would be that we are, you know, negotiations with the fire union are starting back up. And I believe that Kate would echo this, that Michael, Kate and myself believe that this is a topic that I don't want to go too far down this road, that probably is worthy of conversation. You know, as part of the negotiations, you know, just to talk about this and having to figure out maybe what could be done. Is that a fair comment, Kate? Yes, I agree with that. I just have one other question, and it is just to echo what one of the select board members said. And we have two ambulances, and we used to have one at the main station and one at the station in Cotituate, where most of the people in town live. And so the select board person asked, would you reconsider making sure that there was an ambulance at each location if you are always having two ambulances in use? So I do believe there was something in the study that had also referenced the placement of ambulances and potentially moving them with one at each of the stations. And I think that would be something that we would look at. Okay, great. Thank you. Thank you very much, Chief. Anyone else have any other questions? I thought the study was very well done. Yes, it was a lot to read, but it had a lot of good information in it. So it was something that we were, you know, interested in and certainly would work with you on in any way that we can help, so. Okay, well, thank you so much. I appreciate the continued support. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for your service to the town. Thank you. All right.
Thank you. The next agenda item is the discussion of possible vote to create a personnel board working group to review and propose revisions to personnel policies. Now, Paul Warnberg had made a suggestion to me that wouldn't it be more efficient if we had a small working group working with Kate on the policies? We've been trying to get policies done for five years now, and we cranked very slowly. And then when they came, when the working board brought them to the board, the working group brought them to the board, it might be easier to get them finished and so that Kate could get them finalized and posted. And I just wanted to bring that up for comment and, Paul, since you suggested it, if that is reflective of what you had talked about.
Yeah, I'm not sure I was thinking of a working group, but it certainly doesn't sound like a bad idea. Um, I'm not sure I have time to be on that working group, but, um, well, I probably would be a logical person to be on it. I don't know, but, um, So what I was thinking was you and then one of us who have worked on policies and personnel policies before and written them. And I don't know if Jill has, I don't know if Dave has, I know I have, but any, any of us. And, um, but you said you may not have time to work on it. I would like to get them to a point when they come to us in a meeting. I mean, not now I couldn't, but maybe, you know, maybe, um, in another, uh, couple months I could, but yeah. Okay. So if we had two people working on them with Kate, um, it would just be from a legal perspective that, you know, we may want your input at the, you know, to, to, to get it more, uh, more focused for the meetings. Do you think that would cut down on time? Are we still going to be in the same, uh, same kind of pattern where it takes us kind of a long time to get them done? So, so I think it can only be two people because if you have a third, if you bring in a third, that's a forum. So it would have to be a public meeting. Just two people. And if, and if people are willing to do it too, that's the other thing. But it might give the opportunity to get some of them drafted and looked at by board members and then get some input before we get it to the full board. What do you think, Jill? Is that two people, is that two people including Kate? So just, or two board members working with Kate? Yeah. Because Kate would have to be part of that group. Yep. Absolutely. To me, it doesn't make sense to do it without her. Yeah. Yeah. That's what I was thinking was two people and Kate, but I don't know. Would that work, Kate? Or would that be also? Or is that, is that, is that then three people and considered a quorum? No, because I'm not for the board. You're not. Okay. Okay. No.
What do people think?
I don't know. I mean, I can see it, but I'm not sure how much I could help from a policy standpoint. It's just not necessarily my expertise. I'd be happy to provide some support. It's just maybe not my, I don't know. I don't know if I'd be as helpful as maybe others. Okay. Yeah. I mean, I, I've, I've worked on policy before, so I'd be happy to do it with Paul or Marianne, if you feel like you have big opinions about it. I'm happy. I have a big opinion. Yeah. So maybe Paul would like end of September, October, maybe we can come up with some dates that work.
That's definitely possible. Yeah. Okay. Okay. So we can shoot for the fall for that, but let's try and crank through whatever we can during the summer with the, we only got a couple of meetings anyway. Okay. Okay. Great. Thank you. So the next agenda items is a discussion and possible vote to recommend changes to the non-union annual leave policy number N4-1.2. So Kate, why don't I turn that over to you and you tell us what you were thinking. And we all got a copy of the policy in our packet. Yeah. So this policy, so in 2022, I have to go back a little bit in the ask me contract, they negotiated front loading their vacation time. That was effective July 1st, 2022 for that contract cycle. Um, and, uh, our non-union often follows what asked me does. And so we started front loading for our non-union employees as well at that same time. Um, however, the policy never came back to the board. I think I brought it back to you at one point, but it wasn't finalized. Um, so, um, after working, um, you know, reviewing this and working through this with, um, the town manager, we've decided to revert back to a monthly accrual process, um, for our non-union employees. We're actually trying to do this across the board. It's just, it's easier for us to manage. It's, it's, um, it's better for the town. I think it's better for the employee. Um, and, uh, so that's, that's where this is. It's trying to kind of bring us back, um, towards that. However, I want to make sure that we, um, do it in a fair way for our existing employees who were planning on that full accrual that came on July 1. And so I added some language, um, just as a transition, uh, giving them six months, giving them half a year of front loading for this current, this coming up fiscal year. And then as of, um, it actually would be as of January, they would start accruing monthly after that. And then every month after that would just be monthly accruals. So that's where, where we're at on this.
Any thoughts? Any questions on the, on the, um, on the, on the policy? I do know that I know Deb Cohen always would comment that the, um, upload, the front loading of the vacation time represented an unfunded liability for the town. Now, whether it actually happened often, uh, wasn't the, wasn't the react, wasn't the reality. I mean, we, we, we, we would, we would, uh, it was in the budget for the town. It was in the budget for the total year, but if someone left and took their vacation, that won't, that represented an, uh, an unfunded liability that was just kind of hanging out there. Yeah. So how, how, how we work this, at least in the AFSCME contract, and we actually did this with our non-union as well. Um, when we pay, there's language in that contract that says that when someone leaves, we actually prorate what they were received, what they would have gotten had we month, had we done a monthly accrual. So, but that has caused some, some challenges from the employee perspective, because, you know, they're seeing, we have this employee self-service, um, sent, ESS, where they can go in and see how many, their, the balance for all their accruals, what they've used. And so from their perspective, they've got, you know, their 15 days, they leave in August, they think they're going to get 15 days, but that's not how we've been operating. So I think it's a little confusing as well. Even in the contracts, it said that that's how it was done when they left, it was on an accrual basis. But so some people have been interpreting it, that it was, you know, it wasn't on an accrual basis. It was just all up front. So, yeah. Yeah. And I think we've had this discussion before. I like the month by month accrual. I think it's much easier to navigate for everybody involved. Oh, sorry. I didn't mean to, you know, go ahead. No, no, sorry. I was, go ahead. Sorry. I just wanted to point out one thing for the transition language that I added for that six months. I think I said effective December 1st. That should actually be January 1st, 2027, because that would be the start of the second six months of the fiscal year. So I just need to update that. Where was that in the, um, in the policy? The bottom, here, let me share my screen. Page one.
It's the end of the second page, um, that paragraph. Uh, can you see it now, my screen? No. Is it not? Yeah, there it is. Oh, I, I said here effective 12-1, that should actually be, uh, January 1st, 2027. So that was an error on my end. Oh, I see. Okay. That was, okay. So what is it you said it is? No? January 1st, 2027. Okay. Does anyone have any questions, um, on this policy or any, um, were there any places that they wanted to make changes or were there any, um, things that they noted? Um, this is a pretty minor issue, but, you know, since we're tinkering with this policy, the, um, there's a suggestion about five days of notice for using leave. And, uh, I'm assuming, you know, people generally give you much more notice than that, but, you know, might it be a good idea to, to suggest that there's more notice for, uh, uh, longer vacation requests. I think you have like 48 hours for under, for, uh, for less than five days and five days for five or more days. But, um, you know, might you want to suggest like, uh, you know, you know, two weeks or four weeks notice for five days or more, uh, obviously waivable by the, you know, depart, by the, by you or the department manager.
Yeah. Which paid you long, Paul?
It's on, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's on the screen, actually. We're looking right at it under usage. Uh-huh. Okay.
Yeah. I've always thought that, that, uh, 48 hours for requests less than five days is, is really short. Um, that's the same, this is same in language in, in our asker. I, I thought you should at least get five days, uh, or, you know, maybe two weeks notice for 48 hours, especially if you're talking about a department head. Now, to be fair, most of our employees give a lot of notice because there are a lot of, they're planning ahead of time. So we usually have a month or so notice. Um, but I, I agree. I think that's probably worth addressing. What would you say, Paul? Uh, you can make it, you can make it, uh, you know, uh, five days for, uh, under five days or, or, or, uh, or more or, or, or 10 days. Um, you can, uh, you can make it, um, I think 10, you know, 15 days or, or, uh, 20 days for requests of five days or more. Um, I'm not sure you have to match the, um, the collective bargaining. I know you have in many cases, but.
Yeah, I agree with that. Um, yeah, I, I'm happy for recommendations. If you, I don't know if you have similar language and policies that you've seen and what, um, what are requirements. I think we're pretty, pretty, uh, across the board. This is pretty much what we require on most of our, um, I think public safety is a little different, but. Right. Cause they have to, they have to really figure out their schedules in advance. The other legal requirement, just, you know, consistency and reasonableness. I agree. The other thing I was thinking is that if we ever had a situation or scenario where an employee wanted to take more than two weeks, like they wanted to take a month off or something like that, um, it, that very rare, but it could happen and maybe add, we should add some language about that needs approval from the department head and town manager or something like that before allowing dependent on operational need. I was just pulling that language out, but. And part of my thoughts on this, because you can use it in an hour, but you're saying you need to give two weeks notice for less than five days. Like what if somebody has something that they need to take an hour for, but you're saying they need, I just think because it's subject to the, the department head or the town manager that people would, uh, that they can say, no, if somebody saying, I want to take four days starting tomorrow, but the needs of the department don't support that, then, then the department head could say no, because there isn't enough notice for us to cover. I mean, I do think there's some like innate flexibility in there that if somebody is taking advantage of using large amounts of time consistently without notice, that's, that's my two cents. Yeah, no, I agree. If that's what like all the other contracts say for consistency sake, you might want to keep it the same, but again, there's kind of that innate understanding that you do need approval to take it.
Yeah. I mean, it's almost, it feels like there's, there's like a tiered if you wanted to use like, um, you know, a day or less, right. So you're using seven hours, which is a day, or you're using two hours, you know, you can do that 24 hours to 48 hours ahead of time, but anything more than that, you should give like between, um, you know, a day or two days and five days, you should give a week and then five days or more, you should give two weeks. I was just, yeah. Just thinking about a tiered system, maybe, although that makes it a little complicated to implement.
Have there been any issues in the past with this as is? No, not that I know of, um, our employees are usually really good about, um, giving, getting approval and giving a lot of, um, notice. I've not really known any, or heard of any issues. And I also just want to keep in mind that this is, this is only impacts about 35 employees. Um, so our non-union pool of employees is fairly small and it's primarily department heads. So what's the, um, what's the conclusion?
Can we just keep it as is with the edits that Kate recommended? Okay. Do you want to make a motion to that effect? Yep. I'll make a motion that we keep the document now as is being, uh, what Kate had presented as options for us. Okay. And can I have a second? Yeah. Thank you. Okay. Roll call vote, Paul. Yes. Okay. Dave. Yes. Jill. Yep. And Marianne. Yes. Okay. Great. Thank you. And we will have for our next meeting, there's a couple of policies, right? Kate, what ones will those be? Do we know? Um, I don't, I, I have to go back and look at my notes. I'm sorry. I don't know about the top of my head. Okay. Yeah. Okay. Um, so the next agenda item is, uh, discussion and approval of open session meetings of three to 26. I think I sent those to you ahead of the packet date, just so you had a chance to review it. Um, don't, if you want to go page by page, I numbered the pages. Um, and I did have a question, Mark, because I couldn't tell, and I watched the video and I still didn't have the answer. Um, let's see. Oh, Robbie Bullard was Zoom manager, monitored the equipment for public comment. I couldn't remember if Robbie was there for my notes and there was no, no, no indication at the meeting. So is that one that you did, Kate, or did Robbie do it? Yeah, that is one that I did. That was on a Monday. So I think he was probably doing other meetings. Okay. So we'll say that you were, Kate, you were Zoom manager. When I, when I put it, I was like, wait a minute. I think, I think I have no proof of this. Okay. So that was on page one. Anybody else see anything on page one, page two, page three?
Um, there was one other thing I think I saw, and when I saw it in the, when I saw the, uh, on the, on the, on the, um, on the, uh, on the recording was that I thanked, uh, I thanked, uh, Kate, Katie Yee and Kate Ryan for the work on the project and, and for the presentation, but also made a statement that we thought that it was really important that the salary and classification study support, um, uh, compensation that would attract people and also provide for internal equity. So if you don't mind, I would add that if that's okay with everyone. Where did you want to add that? I was at the end. It was just the last statement I, I made before, before, uh, closing out that item. Um, uh, so it would be, uh, about, uh, uh, compensation that would attract and re and retain employees and also provide for, uh, internal equity because as, as it gets all rolled out, it, that's the, that's the goal. Uh, oh, wait, sorry. The goal of the compensation study. I don't have to do it now. I can, um, yeah, I'll write it. I'll write it out for you. Oh, you'll write it. Okay. Yeah, I will. Don't worry about it. I'll send it to you. Yeah. Okay. Is there anything else that anybody saw? Okay. If not, may I have a motion on the minutes as amended, the minutes of March 2nd, 2026. Okay.
Okay. Uh, Jill, I didn't hear you. Your sound is off, but I saw you. Sorry. I'll move. I move to. Yep. Okay. And can I have a second? Second. And that's Dave. Yep. Okay. Okay. Roll call vote. Paul. Yes. Yes. Okay. Dave. Yes. Jill. Yes. Marianne. Yes. Okay. So the, that's the end of our, um, I think, oh no, we need to have our, um, we need to establish our next meeting date. And I had done a little bit of, uh, asking everyone when, when we have time in July. And I think there's a one date at the end of July. So we can either have it at the end of July or just wait till August and not have a July meeting. What would people prefer? I mean, it's towards, I think it's like the 27th or the 28th.
Actually, it's the 28th or 29th because my birthday comes in there and I'm away. Um, and that's the only date that all of us were available. So we can either, you know, do something in August or, and, and I think what we want to do is to get some, uh, some of the policies done. So, and, and Kate, you said you're, oh no, your vacations in August, right? So maybe August isn't great either, but. I'm, I'm away the 13th through the 17th of July. Um, and then I'm away, um, August 19th through the 26th.
And, um, let me see if I have my calendar. What is it? What are, what are other people think? Kate, is there anything of urgency, uh, regarding having a meeting in July or what are your thoughts? If there's anything that we can wait till August on? Um, I think it could wait. Well, I think at this point, uh, we're focusing on policies. So those are not as urgent. But important. Yeah. Um, there's nothing else on the horizon that I can think of that would need on a meeting sooner rather than later. And the thing is, if we, we, we want to get them done if we can before the fall, because then that gets to be really crazy. It's the end of the year, the budget, the whole, that all, every, everything gets crazy. So if we can do them like during the summer or towards the end of the summer, we're at least we can get them done. And so, um, I, I did give you a list of when I was away in August and I don't, let's see, I must have it here somewhere too. Um, but did, uh, I think what are people's schedules in August? Pretty much. I could do August 4th, 5th, or 6th, if that works, which is close to the end of July, but I can do the beginning of August. What, what about you? I was going to say my vacations are done in July, so I'm wide open for August. Okay. Paul. Um, yeah, August is not too good for me. I mean, I'll, I'll try, I'll try to attend, but, um, uh, I, um, I could, I, um, I don't think I could do August 4th. Um, I can check my schedule, but, um, we also all said we could do the 28th or 29th. So in July of July, if, if, I mean, it's not that different. So. Yeah. That's, that's actually better for me, but I could, you all try to do August if that works better for the group. Yeah. I know 20th or 29th also worked for me. Does that work for you, Dave? Works for me. Okay. Me too. Which is the 20, which day of the week are they? Tuesday, Tuesday and Wednesday, which is better. I'd rather do Wednesday the 29th. Okay. Okay. Is that right? Yep. Yep. Okay. So that'll be our next meeting. And now I will, let's see, are we,
I will, um, make a motion. There being no further business, we will, I will make a motion that we move into executive session, uh, according to chapter 30, section 21, uh, I'm blanking on the. A. A, 21. A to hear a grievance from the firefighters, uh, because to do so in open session would, um, uh, would, uh, jeopardize the bargaining ability of the town. Uh, what I would suggest is that we, we adjourn directly from our executive session and not come back into open session. And if, uh, if that works for people. So, um, uh, yeah, I'm only if I need a second. Well, yeah, before we do that, I just had a quick question about, um, I should have raised this earlier, but I was remembering from last meeting that there were some changes to the minutes that I had done. And I don't think I ever followed up. Does that, did I need to email somebody or does that get done based on the conversation in the meeting?
Did you, did you, did you do them, Kate? I, I did. I have been actually keeping notes and, and making the changes that you approve. Right. Um, if that's acceptable. That's wonderful. Better than acceptable. It's lauded. Yeah. I was looking back and check the videos just to make sure that I'm capturing everything. So, yeah. Okay. Great. Thank you. I thought she said that though. I thought that she was taking them the last time. I'm glad you asked. Okay. Okay. Thank you very much. So can I have a second and, uh, who are we inviting, um, into executive session? Who's going to be there for the firefighters? Okay. I believe. Do we, do we, do we announce that in open session or do we wait? Okay. Yeah. We announced who we're taking with us or who's going to be there. Yeah. I believe it's Taylor Ziegler Miller, the union president and, um, captain Doug Williams. I'm not sure if he's going to be there, but I, I believe, I think he's planning to, so. Okay. And who is presenting for the town, Kate? Um, I am. Okay. The town manager's on away this week, so. Yeah. I thought he was on vacation this week. Okay. So, um, so I, I also, um, invite, uh, Taylor Ziegler Miller, the president of firefighters association, uh, firefighter Doug Williams and Kate Ryan to attend with us. Can I have a second? I'll second. Okay. Beat you. And, uh, roll call vote, Jill. Yes. Paul. Yes. Dave. Yes. And Marianne. Yes. And we are going to be adjourning directly from open session. I mean, from, yeah, from, uh, executive session. We won't be back. Okay. So we have to find our links. Thank you. Thank you. See you.
Okay. You're still here. Yeah. Okay. Thank you. I'm sorry. Um, and then we, um, before, before we go into executive session, we will have, um, anything that, uh, has occurred within, you know, less than 24 hours notice, uh, that announcements, um, the, um, we don't have announcements on our agenda. So we need to put announcements on our agenda. Uh, uh, I would like to, um, uh, announce, um, on behalf of the board members. So we want to thank, um, um, uh, for her years of service. Um, I don't know how many years she's been on the board, Katie. What is it, six? Um, five. The terms were five years. Okay. Yeah. I think that, I think she started prior to, oh, yeah, I think at the time it was, uh, she was, she had been on for a year. So I think she's, um, served for six years. Uh, the next, um, and, and so I appreciate, and we all appreciate her, her participation. Um, and the next item is discussion and review of the fire staffing study, which was on the website, which I hope most of us have read. I've read it. And, um, and, um, Chief McPherson has agreed to, um, to, uh, to lead a discussion and tell us a bit about the fire staffing study and one of the recommendations. Chief? Okay. Can everyone hear me okay? Mm-hmm. Okay. Awesome. So I'm going to start, I don't know if you saw the presentation I made to the select board, just talking a little bit about the study itself, and then I'll get into some details. And if you have questions, just let me know. But I just want to start high level is obviously we had a fire department staffing study. It was fun. The funding was approved at 2024 town meeting. It was conducted by MRI, which is municipal resources, and they are a third party vendor that was hired by the town to do this. And this was a competitive bid process in terms of their selection that it took a period of time to get the study completed, but it was done in March of 2026. I hope everybody took the opportunity to read all 104 pages of said study. I know it's a thrilling reading for you, but their study did come up with 35 recommendations. And if you haven't seen, I think all you've seen, it's also available for anybody else who might be listening on the fire department's website, on the main page for the fire department, because we want to make sure that people could find that and look at that. And, you know, I think high level, and I'll get more detail after this, but I think there was a paragraph in this report that I think was very relevant and helped summarize, I think, the findings. And it's difficult, we're not going to have time today to go through, of course, 35 recommendations, but the conclusion was the data and observations presented in this report make clear that the department is operating near the limits of its current staffing and deployment model. Continued growth in EMS demand, increasing call concurrency, and rising operational complexity, place sustained pressure on the personnel and resources. Without strategic adjustments, these pressures may erode response reliability, increase fatigue and burnout, and heighten operational risk. So that was, I think, a high level paragraph that kind of summarized a lot of the findings and recommendations. So it's great that we've done this study, but the next question people have is, okay, so what are the next steps? I know that the select board has agreed to form a working group. There was a recommendation for the composition of that working group, and that included fire chief, assistant chief, a member from the fire department, a union representative or designee, a select board designee, a finance committee designee, I believe there was somebody from human resources or personnel, and a citizen from the community. And we're going to use a working group to go through the recommendations to help us prioritize and evaluate these recommendations so that we can report back to the select board and the appropriate boards with a list of prioritized recommendations. So I'll stop there for a second, see if there's any questions, and I can give you a little bit more detail if you would like. Okay, I did forget to ask for any public comments. So Ravi, if there's anybody who has any questions of the chief right now in the public who wants to ask some questions, are there anybody? I see no attendees right now. Great, thank you. So questions from the personnel board regarding the study or any questions people have? Yeah, well, I'll start with a comment. I thought the survey, the study was pretty impressive overall, very thorough, and I think it points to a very high level of performance by the fire department, which is, you know, I think we all as residents believe that, but it's nice to see an independent expert confirm that. I guess this is both a comment and a question. It struck me that a lot of the pressure in terms of staffing and call response time is due to an increase in EMS calls and particularly around assisted living. And that's, you know, while the assisted living beds or residents seem like it's around 400 to 450 people, there seem to be accounting for nearly, you know, 25 to 30 percent, I don't have the report in front of me, of the EMS calls, which is quite burdensome. And, and I just want to, Chief, I wanted your thoughts about that and, you know, what you see as, you know, the, as the solution. Yeah, sure. So, I mean, high level, I think that the town has actually had some meaningful growth, right, in terms of the risk and hazard profile. And one of those changes was, in fact, assisted living. And the statistic is actually 30 percent of our EMS call volume is to those communities. And what I would point out is over a period of 25 years, there honestly was not a lot of changes to the fire department staffing, but yet we ended up with three additional assisted living facilities. And they all came at different times. And eventually, I think today, you know, we have made some investment in the fire department over the last 10 years. And I want to thank everybody in town for supporting us from capital expenditures and also staffing, because we have actually added an assistant chief in 2016. In 2019, we added two firefighter paramedic positions. And then in 21, I got a safer grant for two more people. So, over the past 10 years, we've added some staff. But over the past 25 years, when you had tremendous call volume growth and we put in assisted living, I don't think we understood what the impact would be. And now they are significant contributors, right, to our EMS call volume. And EMS call volume is what drives, obviously, a lot of the total volume for our department. The question I had about that, Chief, too, was when it was first decided that we would move from a fire department that was mainly firefighters to those that would have capabilities of being EMTs and staffing the ambulances, that there was a – the fire chief had said it would be good income for the town. So, that when we go to the assisted living facilities, those are presumably calls that are paid for by either families or insurance, et cetera. But what is the – what's the distinction – I mean, not the distinction, but how much – how much money do we get from the calls versus the cost of manning the ambulances? Because they recommended a second ambulance, and I know that there's the possibility of getting private ambulance service, which we probably have to use a fair amount of the time to add to our own capability. But what's the – what is – what do those numbers look like? Okay. So, I'll start at high level and just say to you that if we are fully staffed, we can actually run two ambulances, and we do collect revenue, right, when people have insurance. And I want to emphasize to anybody in the public, never hesitate to call us, all right, because you're concerned about a financial burden, because we don't charge people unless they transport. And we typically – if you don't have insurance and can't afford to pay for an ambulance ride, then typically there's ways to work that out. So, having said that, there is private insurance, and there is MassHealth, Medicare, Medicaid, all right? Right. Private insurance pays significantly higher rates for us. And, in fact, the majority of the $800,000 we get in ambulance revenue every year, the majority of that comes from a smaller percentage of people, but yet we get greater reimbursement for private insurance. So, when we talk about MassHealth, Medicare, Medicaid, they pay significantly less when we do a transport. So, yes, it's absolutely correct that for the assisted living that we do receive some reimbursement as negotiated with our ambulance company and whatever the insurance would be. I would suggest to you that those transports are typically not transports where we're actually making money, and our goal is not to make money, but we typically lose money on those calls in the sense that our cost of service is higher than the cost that we are receiving back from those insurance companies. So, in some cases, we'll receive back $300 for an ambulance transport for a Medicare, Medicaid, or MassHealth patient. So, again, we're not in the business of trying to make money, but from a reimbursement standpoint, the significant difference is private pay versus some of the other insurance companies and sources. So, you're in the same position as all of health care today with the Medicare, the Medicaid payments being substantially lower than cost. Well, I would just say that, obviously, there's a bigger picture dynamic, which is all of our costs have gone up significantly. Personally, personnel costs, material costs, vehicle costs have increased. The Medicare, Medicaid, and private health care reimbursement rates have really not kept up with what our cost structure is. Actually, we're not seeing – $800,000 is great, and I'm glad that we can bring that back to the town. But in terms of our costs have increased faster than our reimbursements with insurance companies.
Okay. And if we're fully staffed, we do have the capability of two ambulances? We do, if we are running at seven. Okay. The reality is that the vast majority of the time, we are running at five people because contractual sick time, location time, sometimes people get time off, and other challenges. So, we run at five people. I think the statistic is 73% of the time. And the challenge with that is our ambulance is frequently out and transporting patients, so they're out of town. So, if we have five people and two are on the ambulance, we have three people left in town. Now, during the day, the assistant chief and myself are typically in town, but we also go to meetings and we also have other responsibilities. So, in some cases, after hours, you have three people left in town, right? And that's one of the big concerns and one of the recommendations that was made by this group was, instead of dropping to five, that we should increase the staffing to six, so that we can comply with some of the NFPA standards or better comply with it more often. And, number two, there's this rule that OSHA put out, which is two in and two out. And you're very simply supposed to have two people outside of a structure when you send two people in for safety purposes. So, if we have three people left in town, we're not always able to meet the OSHA two in, two out. Now, we are very aggressive with mutual aid because we depend upon mutual aid and they depend upon us. So, for any type of fire call and even big structures, we have automatic responses coming to us. But just remember, with some of those responses, they're coming from another community. So, it's going to take them a little bit longer to get there. So, I think those were some of the points that you probably saw as part of, certainly, the study that was done. Yes. Anybody else have any questions? Dave? I do, but I think I'll let the chief continue before I ask those questions. I'll answer probably a little bit further on regards to staffing. Okay. Okay. So, just a couple other things that I wanted to cover that I think are important is, you know, we talked briefly about the community risk and hazard profile. And I'd ask you just to think about in, you know, 25 years ago, what your average house looked like in Weyland compared to today. And our single biggest exposure is actually a single family house at night with people in the house, right, with no sprinkler system. And the report kind of called it out. But what's really important to remember is, if we think about the size and types of structures that we now have in Weyland, Weyland has changed over the past 25 years. And we talked about the assisted living. And we talked about the size of those buildings. We talked about the residents in the buildings. But we also have added a whole bunch of large residential apartment buildings. And I'm going to just use the example, there is a number of buildings that were built on Boston Post Road. And we talk about staffing. If we have someone who left a pizza box on their stove, and that's happened a number of times, that building is so large. Even if we show up with five people, we're typically striking a working fire assignment, which brings us two to three additional engine companies for mutual aid resources to evacuate the smoke from the building just because of the size of that structure. So when we think about this, we've added a number of large residential projects with lightweight construction, which make it much harder for us to get in the buildings, right, because of just the size of them, but also to be effective with our operations. We also have a number of schools, right, and there's a number of schools that have been built and are in process of being built within the community, right, which creates additional exposures. And these are all high hazard exposures for us. I also just want to remind people, what's changed in the fire service, and this is noted in the report, is, you know, some of the other risks that we face, and that includes lightweight construction, right? Lightweight construction burns and collapses much more quickly than some of your traditional construction types. Electric vehicles, right, electric vehicles, we've had a number of electric vehicle fires, and lithium-iron battery fires have become much more a normal occurrence, right? Not necessarily a good thing, but they are very labor, water, and time intensive, right? We also have energy storage systems. So some of the size and types of exposures that we're facing today have changed, and they're going to continue to change as we have a number of projects, you know, in the future. So we're playing a little bit of catch-up. So we already talked about 30% of our EMS call is to the assisted living communities. And when we look at, you know, one of the trends that concerns me most is the multiple calls. So what we've seen over the past five years is more and more calls occurring at the same time. So it's not totally unheard of, you know, I think the numbers, I don't have them in front of me, but to have two calls, I mean, I think that happened 216 times where we're getting two calls at a time. Sometimes we get three, and that happens also. So you can imagine with sometimes only three people in town because they're already doing a transport, and we get multiple calls, it's hard for us to provide the same level of service, right, that I think the residents expect. And I want to compliment the firefighters because I tell you, day in and day out, they do some pretty amazing work, and we work at the paramedic level. And we're able to do a lot of amazing things for the residents there. And to me, I think the town's going to have to make a decision as we look at these recommendations, and we talk about what is the right level of service for this community, and what people expect. And then, obviously, whatever that right level of service is going to be, there may be a cost associated with that, right, if we choose to change staffing. So, you know, I think that's some of the messaging. And again, I want to recognize the town has invested over the past 10 years, but before that, there was not a lot of investment. And I would say in hindsight, probably this should have been addressed many years ago and continually addressed, but now we're at the place where we have an independent organization who looked at this, who does a lot of these studies, saying there's a number of things that you really should look at and try to address. So I think we have a good mechanism in place, as I mentioned, to take what we have for a study, look at these recommendations, prioritize these studies, these recommendations. Some of them may be additive, and some of them may incorporate us changing the way we do things. And I think there's some of those that are very important for us as well. So I'm going to stop there and open it back up in case you have questions, because I know I've just thrown a lot at you. Dave, do you have a question that you want to ask? Yeah, well, I guess I can ask it now. As regards to retention, is that something that it's okay if I ask about that now? Yeah. Yeah. Okay, sure. So I saw the retention numbers. I think that was something over the last five years that it increased. And I was curious from your – there was some information from the third party. But, Chief, from your standpoint, do you have a sense of why you think there's been an increase in retention over the last five years? Well, I would say, again, I think they said that we had above-average retention, and I'm proud of the retention, but I think it's something the town has to consistently work at. I know over the past couple of years, there has been some increased numbers, but some of that has been, what shall we say, individuals leaving because there was not a good fit in the community. So I can say to you that, like, four of the people over the past five years have been individuals that we hired from other departments where there just wasn't a good fit, and they chose to step down. But I think it's a challenge in this day and age because, you know, it's a highly competitive market to find paramedics, and that's what we look to hire. It's competitive from a wage perspective. It's competitive from a condition standpoint. And if you're a paramedic with your – and you've gone to the full-time fire academy, you can pick where you want to go in this state because everybody is looking for them. So I would just say, to me, that becomes what I consider to be an ongoing challenge that we have to manage carefully because we've had good results, and that was, I think, documented in the study. But I don't take that for granted, right? We have to continue to work on that, and we're going to lose really awesome people who provide a very high level of service. Do we lose people because there's no place for them to be promoted to? That there should be probably some people who leave because of that, because there's no room for growth because we're a small department. What I would say is over the past five years, you know, just if I had to make a couple comments. Number one, again, some of it was there wasn't a good fit, and people resigned. Number two, sometimes people want something bigger than Wayland. So we've lost a number of people to Marlboro and Cambridge. Now, that's a financial incentive, but it's also because in those communities, they don't have to operate on an ambulance, and the bulk of our work is ambulance work. So if you go to Cambridge, you make a lot of money, and you don't work on the ambulance, right? And I think we've had a number of just straight retirements of some really experienced people. So the good news is we have had some opportunities from a leadership standpoint, and we have one captain who has told me he's retiring, I think, in July, so there'll be a little bit more opportunity. But I do worry about that, Marianne, as we go forward, because now we have a pretty group of, or a reasonably stable group of officers, and we have a lot of newer people, right? I think if you read the study, it also talks, though, about potentially looking at kind of the officer core and how they're used. And I think there's some other opportunities and things we could do to help give opportunities to some of those other people who will be future officers. But so far, that has not been the biggest driver of losing people. I'm sorry, Dave, I stepped on you. So you had an add-on to that question for the chief. No, that's okay. Yeah, so the people that have left over the last couple of years, so they're more newer hires. They're not as much tenured staff members. There are people that you had mentioned came from one department to us. Would you say that the tenure of those having left were fairly new hires, as in people that have been with the department less than three years? So I would say that two groupings, again, retirees, people retiring with many, many years of experience, and finally decided to retire. And the other group was new people who were less than a year, probationary department members. And within the first 12 months, they were probationary members. And things did not work out. So conversations were had with some of those, or in some cases, people chose to leave within their first year because it just was not a good fit.
Okay. And how did the numbers from – there wasn't anything in the study, but from your perspective, how do our numbers of retention compare to our neighboring towns? Or, from your perspective, and the firefighting community, how we compare nationally? Yeah. Is this a trend? There was a section in here that did actually address that. And I think if you turn to page – oh, where is it? It's – okay. It's page 81. And I think they – okay. So the way the fire department has maintained a relatively high retention rate over the past several years with a peak of 100% in 2019. So I would say that our retention rate has actually been pretty good. And just as this study says, relatively high retention rate, which, again, is difficult in this marketplace because paramedics and many of the people we are hiring do not live in Weyland. They live long distances. They didn't grow up in Weyland. There's not the same connectivity. So I'm proud of the results we have. And I think it's a tribute to the men and women and the officers we have and the support that town has given them so far. So I think we have above-average retention. And I think this report kind of illustrates that as well.
Thank you. Do you have any questions? Bill, do you have any questions? Yeah, I was unmuting myself. I'm sorry. I didn't have any questions. I thought the study was very comprehensive and well done and well laid out. It was very easy to understand, and I loved the summary at the end of every section of the recommendations. Paul, do you have any other questions? Yeah, is there, has the, did the study or has the department considered hiring paramedics who are not firefighters to address more of the EMS workload and to allow firefighters to be freed up to do firefighting and fire prevention? Yep. So one of the recommendations, and we refer to that, today we operate on the ambulance with two paramedics at all times. And many other towns, Natick, Framingham, I know Concord is just about to go there too as well, operate with a paramedic and a basic EMT. So if it's an advanced level care, the paramedic will render care, and if we need a second paramedic, typically we have enough paramedics, so they have enough paramedics where they can pull a second medic off the engine to assist with the transport. So one of the recommendations in this report was that we look at running a PB model, which would allow us to hire basic EMTs to work on the EMS with a paramedic, right? And I think there was a much greater, what should we say, labor pool when we talk about basic EMTs compared to paramedics. It is the paramedic pool that is so short right now. So I do think when we talk about operational changes, a serious conversation has to be had about that because I believe it's like 60% of our calls, the various from year to year, are actually ALS calls and 40% are BLS calls, right? And a lot of those ALS calls are more simple ALS calls, where probably one medic could handle that. But that's something we want to work with a union on to find out how we can do that and be successful and look at that, at least. Again, as part of this study, that is one of the recommendations. And then my last question is, I assume this was beyond the scope of the study, but they didn't look at any staffing issues around injured on duty issues because that's become a persistent issue for us. I don't know if that was outside of their charge, but any thoughts about that? What I would say is I don't think they went into great detail about IOD. And, you know, I do believe that that is a challenge that this town is facing right now, which could impact certainly our ability to retain people and how the town is viewed. So I think that obviously it would be in the town's best interest to continue to work to resolve and maybe figure out a better way to address some of those. But the study did not go into great depth relative to those statistics. Anyone else? Well, just to follow up, is there an opportunity either through this vendor or through the working group to maybe look at IOD best practices in similar communities? Yeah, Paul, my hope would be that we are, you know, negotiations with the fire union are starting back up. And I believe that Kate would echo this, that Michael, Kate and myself believe that this is a topic that I don't want to go too far down this road, that probably is worthy of conversation. You know, as part of the negotiations, you know, just to talk about this and having to figure out maybe what could be done. Is that a fair comment, Kate? Yes, I agree with that. I just have one other question, and it is just to echo what one of the select board members said. And we have two ambulances, and we used to have one at the main station and one at the station in Cotituate, where most of the people in town live. And so the select board person asked, would you reconsider making sure that there was an ambulance at each location if you are always having two ambulances in use? So I do believe there was something in the study that had also referenced the placement of ambulances and potentially moving them with one at each of the stations. And I think that would be something that we would look at. Okay, great. Thank you. Thank you very much, Chief. Anyone else have any other questions? I thought the study was very well done. Yes, it was a lot to read, but it had a lot of good information in it. So it was something that we were, you know, interested in and certainly would work with you on in any way that we can help, so. Okay, well, thank you so much. I appreciate the continued support. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for your service to the town. Thank you. All right.
Thank you. The next agenda item is the discussion of possible vote to create a personnel board working group to review and propose revisions to personnel policies. Now, Paul Warnberg had made a suggestion to me that wouldn't it be more efficient if we had a small working group working with Kate on the policies? We've been trying to get policies done for five years now, and we cranked very slowly. And then when they came, when the working board brought them to the board, the working group brought them to the board, it might be easier to get them finished and so that Kate could get them finalized and posted. And I just wanted to bring that up for comment and, Paul, since you suggested it, if that is reflective of what you had talked about.
Yeah, I'm not sure I was thinking of a working group, but it certainly doesn't sound like a bad idea. Um, I'm not sure I have time to be on that working group, but, um, well, I probably would be a logical person to be on it. I don't know, but, um, So what I was thinking was you and then one of us who have worked on policies and personnel policies before and written them. And I don't know if Jill has, I don't know if Dave has, I know I have, but any, any of us. And, um, but you said you may not have time to work on it. I would like to get them to a point when they come to us in a meeting. I mean, not now I couldn't, but maybe, you know, maybe, um, in another, uh, couple months I could, but yeah. Okay. So if we had two people working on them with Kate, um, it would just be from a legal perspective that, you know, we may want your input at the, you know, to, to, to get it more, uh, more focused for the meetings. Do you think that would cut down on time? Are we still going to be in the same, uh, same kind of pattern where it takes us kind of a long time to get them done? So, so I think it can only be two people because if you have a third, if you bring in a third, that's a forum. So it would have to be a public meeting. Just two people. And if, and if people are willing to do it too, that's the other thing. But it might give the opportunity to get some of them drafted and looked at by board members and then get some input before we get it to the full board. What do you think, Jill? Is that two people, is that two people including Kate? So just, or two board members working with Kate? Yeah. Because Kate would have to be part of that group. Yep. Absolutely. To me, it doesn't make sense to do it without her. Yeah. Yeah. That's what I was thinking was two people and Kate, but I don't know. Would that work, Kate? Or would that be also? Or is that, is that, is that then three people and considered a quorum? No, because I'm not for the board. You're not. Okay. Okay. No.
What do people think?
I don't know. I mean, I can see it, but I'm not sure how much I could help from a policy standpoint. It's just not necessarily my expertise. I'd be happy to provide some support. It's just maybe not my, I don't know. I don't know if I'd be as helpful as maybe others. Okay. Yeah. I mean, I, I've, I've worked on policy before, so I'd be happy to do it with Paul or Marianne, if you feel like you have big opinions about it. I'm happy. I have a big opinion. Yeah. So maybe Paul would like end of September, October, maybe we can come up with some dates that work.
That's definitely possible. Yeah. Okay. Okay. So we can shoot for the fall for that, but let's try and crank through whatever we can during the summer with the, we only got a couple of meetings anyway. Okay. Okay. Great. Thank you. So the next agenda items is a discussion and possible vote to recommend changes to the non-union annual leave policy number N4-1.2. So Kate, why don't I turn that over to you and you tell us what you were thinking. And we all got a copy of the policy in our packet. Yeah. So this policy, so in 2022, I have to go back a little bit in the ask me contract, they negotiated front loading their vacation time. That was effective July 1st, 2022 for that contract cycle. Um, and, uh, our non-union often follows what asked me does. And so we started front loading for our non-union employees as well at that same time. Um, however, the policy never came back to the board. I think I brought it back to you at one point, but it wasn't finalized. Um, so, um, after working, um, you know, reviewing this and working through this with, um, the town manager, we've decided to revert back to a monthly accrual process, um, for our non-union employees. We're actually trying to do this across the board. It's just, it's easier for us to manage. It's, it's, um, it's better for the town. I think it's better for the employee. Um, and, uh, so that's, that's where this is. It's trying to kind of bring us back, um, towards that. However, I want to make sure that we, um, do it in a fair way for our existing employees who were planning on that full accrual that came on July 1. And so I added some language, um, just as a transition, uh, giving them six months, giving them half a year of front loading for this current, this coming up fiscal year. And then as of, um, it actually would be as of January, they would start accruing monthly after that. And then every month after that would just be monthly accruals. So that's where, where we're at on this.
Any thoughts? Any questions on the, on the, um, on the, on the policy? I do know that I know Deb Cohen always would comment that the, um, upload, the front loading of the vacation time represented an unfunded liability for the town. Now, whether it actually happened often, uh, wasn't the, wasn't the react, wasn't the reality. I mean, we, we, we, we would, we would, uh, it was in the budget for the town. It was in the budget for the total year, but if someone left and took their vacation, that won't, that represented an, uh, an unfunded liability that was just kind of hanging out there. Yeah. So how, how, how we work this, at least in the AFSCME contract, and we actually did this with our non-union as well. Um, when we pay, there's language in that contract that says that when someone leaves, we actually prorate what they were received, what they would have gotten had we month, had we done a monthly accrual. So, but that has caused some, some challenges from the employee perspective, because, you know, they're seeing, we have this employee self-service, um, sent, ESS, where they can go in and see how many, their, the balance for all their accruals, what they've used. And so from their perspective, they've got, you know, their 15 days, they leave in August, they think they're going to get 15 days, but that's not how we've been operating. So I think it's a little confusing as well. Even in the contracts, it said that that's how it was done when they left, it was on an accrual basis. But so some people have been interpreting it, that it was, you know, it wasn't on an accrual basis. It was just all up front. So, yeah. Yeah. And I think we've had this discussion before. I like the month by month accrual. I think it's much easier to navigate for everybody involved. Oh, sorry. I didn't mean to, you know, go ahead. No, no, sorry. I was, go ahead. Sorry. I just wanted to point out one thing for the transition language that I added for that six months. I think I said effective December 1st. That should actually be January 1st, 2027, because that would be the start of the second six months of the fiscal year. So I just need to update that. Where was that in the, um, in the policy? The bottom, here, let me share my screen. Page one.
It's the end of the second page, um, that paragraph. Uh, can you see it now, my screen? No. Is it not? Yeah, there it is. Oh, I, I said here effective 12-1, that should actually be, uh, January 1st, 2027. So that was an error on my end. Oh, I see. Okay. That was, okay. So what is it you said it is? No? January 1st, 2027. Okay. Does anyone have any questions, um, on this policy or any, um, were there any places that they wanted to make changes or were there any, um, things that they noted? Um, this is a pretty minor issue, but, you know, since we're tinkering with this policy, the, um, there's a suggestion about five days of notice for using leave. And, uh, I'm assuming, you know, people generally give you much more notice than that, but, you know, might it be a good idea to, to suggest that there's more notice for, uh, uh, longer vacation requests. I think you have like 48 hours for under, for, uh, for less than five days and five days for five or more days. But, um, you know, might you want to suggest like, uh, you know, you know, two weeks or four weeks notice for five days or more, uh, obviously waivable by the, you know, depart, by the, by you or the department manager.
Yeah. Which paid you long, Paul?
It's on, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's on the screen, actually. We're looking right at it under usage. Uh-huh. Okay.
Yeah. I've always thought that, that, uh, 48 hours for requests less than five days is, is really short. Um, that's the same, this is same in language in, in our asker. I, I thought you should at least get five days, uh, or, you know, maybe two weeks notice for 48 hours, especially if you're talking about a department head. Now, to be fair, most of our employees give a lot of notice because there are a lot of, they're planning ahead of time. So we usually have a month or so notice. Um, but I, I agree. I think that's probably worth addressing. What would you say, Paul? Uh, you can make it, you can make it, uh, you know, uh, five days for, uh, under five days or, or, or, uh, or more or, or, or 10 days. Um, you can, uh, you can make it, um, I think 10, you know, 15 days or, or, uh, 20 days for requests of five days or more. Um, I'm not sure you have to match the, um, the collective bargaining. I know you have in many cases, but.
Yeah, I agree with that. Um, yeah, I, I'm happy for recommendations. If you, I don't know if you have similar language and policies that you've seen and what, um, what are requirements. I think we're pretty, pretty, uh, across the board. This is pretty much what we require on most of our, um, I think public safety is a little different, but. Right. Cause they have to, they have to really figure out their schedules in advance. The other legal requirement, just, you know, consistency and reasonableness. I agree. The other thing I was thinking is that if we ever had a situation or scenario where an employee wanted to take more than two weeks, like they wanted to take a month off or something like that, um, it, that very rare, but it could happen and maybe add, we should add some language about that needs approval from the department head and town manager or something like that before allowing dependent on operational need. I was just pulling that language out, but. And part of my thoughts on this, because you can use it in an hour, but you're saying you need to give two weeks notice for less than five days. Like what if somebody has something that they need to take an hour for, but you're saying they need, I just think because it's subject to the, the department head or the town manager that people would, uh, that they can say, no, if somebody saying, I want to take four days starting tomorrow, but the needs of the department don't support that, then, then the department head could say no, because there isn't enough notice for us to cover. I mean, I do think there's some like innate flexibility in there that if somebody is taking advantage of using large amounts of time consistently without notice, that's, that's my two cents. Yeah, no, I agree. If that's what like all the other contracts say for consistency sake, you might want to keep it the same, but again, there's kind of that innate understanding that you do need approval to take it.
Yeah. I mean, it's almost, it feels like there's, there's like a tiered if you wanted to use like, um, you know, a day or less, right. So you're using seven hours, which is a day, or you're using two hours, you know, you can do that 24 hours to 48 hours ahead of time, but anything more than that, you should give like between, um, you know, a day or two days and five days, you should give a week and then five days or more, you should give two weeks. I was just, yeah. Just thinking about a tiered system, maybe, although that makes it a little complicated to implement.
Have there been any issues in the past with this as is? No, not that I know of, um, our employees are usually really good about, um, giving, getting approval and giving a lot of, um, notice. I've not really known any, or heard of any issues. And I also just want to keep in mind that this is, this is only impacts about 35 employees. Um, so our non-union pool of employees is fairly small and it's primarily department heads. So what's the, um, what's the conclusion?
Can we just keep it as is with the edits that Kate recommended? Okay. Do you want to make a motion to that effect? Yep. I'll make a motion that we keep the document now as is being, uh, what Kate had presented as options for us. Okay. And can I have a second? Yeah. Thank you. Okay. Roll call vote, Paul. Yes. Okay. Dave. Yes. Jill. Yep. And Marianne. Yes. Okay. Great. Thank you. And we will have for our next meeting, there's a couple of policies, right? Kate, what ones will those be? Do we know? Um, I don't, I, I have to go back and look at my notes. I'm sorry. I don't know about the top of my head. Okay. Yeah. Okay. Um, so the next agenda item is, uh, discussion and approval of open session meetings of three to 26. I think I sent those to you ahead of the packet date, just so you had a chance to review it. Um, don't, if you want to go page by page, I numbered the pages. Um, and I did have a question, Mark, because I couldn't tell, and I watched the video and I still didn't have the answer. Um, let's see. Oh, Robbie Bullard was Zoom manager, monitored the equipment for public comment. I couldn't remember if Robbie was there for my notes and there was no, no, no indication at the meeting. So is that one that you did, Kate, or did Robbie do it? Yeah, that is one that I did. That was on a Monday. So I think he was probably doing other meetings. Okay. So we'll say that you were, Kate, you were Zoom manager. When I, when I put it, I was like, wait a minute. I think, I think I have no proof of this. Okay. So that was on page one. Anybody else see anything on page one, page two, page three?
Um, there was one other thing I think I saw, and when I saw it in the, when I saw the, uh, on the, on the, on the, um, on the, uh, on the recording was that I thanked, uh, I thanked, uh, Kate, Katie Yee and Kate Ryan for the work on the project and, and for the presentation, but also made a statement that we thought that it was really important that the salary and classification study support, um, uh, compensation that would attract people and also provide for internal equity. So if you don't mind, I would add that if that's okay with everyone. Where did you want to add that? I was at the end. It was just the last statement I, I made before, before, uh, closing out that item. Um, uh, so it would be, uh, about, uh, uh, compensation that would attract and re and retain employees and also provide for, uh, internal equity because as, as it gets all rolled out, it, that's the, that's the goal. Uh, oh, wait, sorry. The goal of the compensation study. I don't have to do it now. I can, um, yeah, I'll write it. I'll write it out for you. Oh, you'll write it. Okay. Yeah, I will. Don't worry about it. I'll send it to you. Yeah. Okay. Is there anything else that anybody saw? Okay. If not, may I have a motion on the minutes as amended, the minutes of March 2nd, 2026. Okay.
Okay. Uh, Jill, I didn't hear you. Your sound is off, but I saw you. Sorry. I'll move. I move to. Yep. Okay. And can I have a second? Second. And that's Dave. Yep. Okay. Okay. Roll call vote. Paul. Yes. Yes. Okay. Dave. Yes. Jill. Yes. Marianne. Yes. Okay. So the, that's the end of our, um, I think, oh no, we need to have our, um, we need to establish our next meeting date. And I had done a little bit of, uh, asking everyone when, when we have time in July. And I think there's a one date at the end of July. So we can either have it at the end of July or just wait till August and not have a July meeting. What would people prefer? I mean, it's towards, I think it's like the 27th or the 28th.
Actually, it's the 28th or 29th because my birthday comes in there and I'm away. Um, and that's the only date that all of us were available. So we can either, you know, do something in August or, and, and I think what we want to do is to get some, uh, some of the policies done. So, and, and Kate, you said you're, oh no, your vacations in August, right? So maybe August isn't great either, but. I'm, I'm away the 13th through the 17th of July. Um, and then I'm away, um, August 19th through the 26th.
And, um, let me see if I have my calendar. What is it? What are, what are other people think? Kate, is there anything of urgency, uh, regarding having a meeting in July or what are your thoughts? If there's anything that we can wait till August on? Um, I think it could wait. Well, I think at this point, uh, we're focusing on policies. So those are not as urgent. But important. Yeah. Um, there's nothing else on the horizon that I can think of that would need on a meeting sooner rather than later. And the thing is, if we, we, we want to get them done if we can before the fall, because then that gets to be really crazy. It's the end of the year, the budget, the whole, that all, every, everything gets crazy. So if we can do them like during the summer or towards the end of the summer, we're at least we can get them done. And so, um, I, I did give you a list of when I was away in August and I don't, let's see, I must have it here somewhere too. Um, but did, uh, I think what are people's schedules in August? Pretty much. I could do August 4th, 5th, or 6th, if that works, which is close to the end of July, but I can do the beginning of August. What, what about you? I was going to say my vacations are done in July, so I'm wide open for August. Okay. Paul. Um, yeah, August is not too good for me. I mean, I'll, I'll try, I'll try to attend, but, um, uh, I, um, I could, I, um, I don't think I could do August 4th. Um, I can check my schedule, but, um, we also all said we could do the 28th or 29th. So in July of July, if, if, I mean, it's not that different. So. Yeah. That's, that's actually better for me, but I could, you all try to do August if that works better for the group. Yeah. I know 20th or 29th also worked for me. Does that work for you, Dave? Works for me. Okay. Me too. Which is the 20, which day of the week are they? Tuesday, Tuesday and Wednesday, which is better. I'd rather do Wednesday the 29th. Okay. Okay. Is that right? Yep. Yep. Okay. So that'll be our next meeting. And now I will, let's see, are we,
I will, um, make a motion. There being no further business, we will, I will make a motion that we move into executive session, uh, according to chapter 30, section 21, uh, I'm blanking on the. A. A, 21. A to hear a grievance from the firefighters, uh, because to do so in open session would, um, uh, would, uh, jeopardize the bargaining ability of the town. Uh, what I would suggest is that we, we adjourn directly from our executive session and not come back into open session. And if, uh, if that works for people. So, um, uh, yeah, I'm only if I need a second. Well, yeah, before we do that, I just had a quick question about, um, I should have raised this earlier, but I was remembering from last meeting that there were some changes to the minutes that I had done. And I don't think I ever followed up. Does that, did I need to email somebody or does that get done based on the conversation in the meeting?
Did you, did you, did you do them, Kate? I, I did. I have been actually keeping notes and, and making the changes that you approve. Right. Um, if that's acceptable. That's wonderful. Better than acceptable. It's lauded. Yeah. I was looking back and check the videos just to make sure that I'm capturing everything. So, yeah. Okay. Great. Thank you. I thought she said that though. I thought that she was taking them the last time. I'm glad you asked. Okay. Okay. Thank you very much. So can I have a second and, uh, who are we inviting, um, into executive session? Who's going to be there for the firefighters? Okay. I believe. Do we, do we, do we announce that in open session or do we wait? Okay. Yeah. We announced who we're taking with us or who's going to be there. Yeah. I believe it's Taylor Ziegler Miller, the union president and, um, captain Doug Williams. I'm not sure if he's going to be there, but I, I believe, I think he's planning to, so. Okay. And who is presenting for the town, Kate? Um, I am. Okay. The town manager's on away this week, so. Yeah. I thought he was on vacation this week. Okay. So, um, so I, I also, um, invite, uh, Taylor Ziegler Miller, the president of firefighters association, uh, firefighter Doug Williams and Kate Ryan to attend with us. Can I have a second? I'll second. Okay. Beat you. And, uh, roll call vote, Jill. Yes. Paul. Yes. Dave. Yes. And Marianne. Yes. And we are going to be adjourning directly from open session. I mean, from, yeah, from, uh, executive session. We won't be back. Okay. So we have to find our links. Thank you. Thank you. See you.