Special Board of Aldermen 03-23-2021 Page 20
Alderman Schmidt
Thank you, Madam President and thank you very much for keeping number 5 in Ward 1. We rely on them
quite a bit and we are very grateful that they are there. | only wanted to know if you feel that there was
anything that would have changed your report if it hadn’t been done in the year of COVID.
Mr. McCutcheon
| don’t think so. It mostly slowed it down, because between March through June basically it was lost time.
We were at the point we were ready to start rocking and rolling and then just everything stopped. So that
slowed it down some but otherwise | think it is pretty much there. The problems with the communication, |
think you can’t help but see when you spend time with those offices. There’s only just so much any one or
two people can do and when you are overwhelmed it hard to be proactive and communicating. Same goes
for the Fire Prevention Division. | think operationally you are pretty good today but those major issues were
identified 20 years ago and since that time, the Administration and Fire Prevention has gotten leaner, while
the workload has continually increased. So | think if you just do a comparison between the two, the end
results are very similar. | think now it is just as Mary-Ellen mentioned earlier is doing a strategic plan
identifying what can we do? Are there some areas where possibly we can supplement with existing staff
from other departments or is there another way we can do this to make it as cost effective as possible but
at the same time recognizing that if you don’t do anything about the problem it’s not going to get anything
done.
Alderman Schmidt
Thank you. This is a tremendous tool for us to use going forward. Thank you very much.
President Wilshire
Alderman Lopez?
Alderman Lopez
| guess that the one good thing about 2020 was that we all used virtual offices a lot more. Sometimes it
can seem like we are in the same virtual office. So are there opportunities there to maybe increase the
availability for on-call staff in a different way than having them on-site at a fire station or is it better to have
somebody manning the fire station and providing additional staffing capacity more for those administrative
calls that you were talking about.
Mr. McCutcheon
Your CVA is going to dictate a lot of that stuff. So, for example, with Fire Prevention, folks come in because
it’s the first open position and they roll out as soon as they get the opportunity; they want to be back in
operations. So that creates a bit of a vacuum in your prevention because there’s just not that consistency
there. Where if you have, say. Civilian plan reviewer, they wouldn’t necessarily be subject to that CVA and
those processes and it probably would be a most cost effective option. Without me diving too deep and
violating Brian’s CVA with the union, but | think there’s a thing to do is we’ve identified the issues, we’ve
provided a couple different ideas of ways to correct it. But then look and based on the revenue you have
available, the highest priority for you and then what’s the most cost effective option to get the job done. |
think those are the decisions that need to be made at this point.
President Wilshire
Are you all set, Alderman Lopez? Alderman Klee?
