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April 26, 2019 Page 3 <br />April 16, 2019, letter. It is great to hear that these efforts are continuing and <br />growing under Chief Smith's leadership. <br />Sadly, this is not the case across Minnesota as the number of volunteer and paid <br />on -call firefighters continues to rapidly decline. As illustrated in Figure 1, there <br />has been a 14.3% decrease in active members in the volunteer pension <br />programs across the state between 1996-2017. This alarming trend is despite <br />significant investments into the pension program, including supplemental state <br />aid which has increased the annual contribution for many relief associations. <br />In your April 16, 2019 letter, you bring attention to Mr. Zikmund's "top expertise" <br />in volunteer pension plans and claim that, "[he] has been directly responsible for <br />