Finance Committee Page 5
January 4, 2017
Assistant Chief Rhodes
Fire alarm, public safety, answering points, yes, by NFPA, they are required to be in a separate location in the
event of catastrophic event. They are supposed to be self-sufficient and secure because of the nature of the
work that they do.
Alderman O’Brien
So this would not be far-fetched to a building where we have secretaries that may not be able to handle
certain circumstances to add a level of security? They should be under the same protection as the NFPA
protects fire alarm. Do you know of any NFPA rules that say secure stations and locked stations to protect
municipal equipment?
Assistant Chief Rhodes
| do not. Not for fire stations. We have taken measures over the last few years, much to the chagrin of the
membership to shut the doors of a lot of our downtown fire stations during the day. It’s not something we like
to do but with a lot of the activity that goes on during the day and people wandering in; we’ve had that happen
at the East Hollis Street station. People expect their fire department to be open and accessible.
Alderman O’Brien
Have we ever had anybody in the dead of night come into a fire station uninvited and sleep on the floor and
some deputy chief gets up to have coffee in the morning and goes whoa?
Assistant Chief Rhodes
| believe so, yes.
Alderman Siegel
| think that what’s happened here is the circumstance in which Safe Stations is being implemented has
uncovered a more immediate need for something that needed to be done anyway. My main concern is yes let’s
do this but at a price that we don’t feel that we are being taking advantage of. | don’t understand why there
would not be a need for the other fire stations. Are they already secured?
Assistant Chief Rhodes
Currently all of our buildings have cypher locks on the exterior doors but none of these other locations employ
civilian employees. It is still a concern, the city’s investment in the infrastructure of the building but at this
point we were just looking to take care of our civilian employees with the hope that maybe with the new
integrated phone system that we might be able to at some point down the road secure these other facilities a
little bit better.
Alderman Siegel
| know that’s not part of the discussion this evening but | believe that is something that would clearly have to
come up. Your personnel need to remain safe in addition to the equipment. We live in a crazy world.
Why are we funding this from the Risk Management pool because this is explicitly for employee safety?
Mayor Donchess
| think it's customarily where we get the money. There has to be a pre-appropriated amount or a new
appropriation. Traditionally we have used the Risk Management pool when addressing these types of
