2021.05.17 CC Minutes - Laserfiche WebLink

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Hugo City Council Meeting Minutes for May 17, 2021 Page 2 of 7 structure fires, and grass/brush/and tree fires were the highest. The department assisted M Health in 133 calls. He compared the number of calls from the past years and pointed out the decline in 2015 when they transitioned the ambulance service. He talked about call volume being down 26% nationally from March -June, largely due to people being told to not call 911 unless absolutely necessary during COVID. He provided information on calls per hours with 54% of calls coming in between 8:00-17:00, which played into their staffing model to hire daytime people, and he said they planned to advertise to hire on June 1. Operational improvements in 2020 were Automatic Aid Agreements with Lino Lakes, Scandia, and Mahtomedi, which were in addition to the ones they already had with Forest Lake, White Bear Lake, and Stillwater. Compton talked about how the automatic aid response for structure fires helped the ISO rating. He provided information on how they adjusted to COVID last year by implementing a "scout" response and running with smaller crews. There were 1,644 training hours for weekly drills, which was down over 1,300 hours due to COVID, and one of the two live training burns were canceled. The department was planning on a live burn this year after the 4th of July holiday. Leadership development classes were also paused, and they were working to resume them. There were typically 13 community events the department participates in annually, but last year, only one blood drive was held. They had already received several requests for this year. Compton talked about Hugo being a Heartsafe community saying they maintained AEDs in three public buildings, and they will be upgrading them this year with donations from the Hugo American Legion, who now have their own that the department will maintain and train them on. There were 11 firefighters that had AEDs in their possession for quick response. The Lions Club and State Farm had also donated money towards the initiative. Goals for 2021 were to create a transition plan for a full-time fire chief, start discussions on daytime staffing models, review EMS in Hugo, and hire more paid on -call firefighters later in the year. He concluded by thanking retiring Council Member Haas for his support of the department over the years and wished him luck in the future. M Health Fairview EMS Annual Report M Health Operations Deputy Chief Tom Dunn explained M Health Fairview had been providing EMS to Hugo since they took over the region from North Memorial EMS in June of 2020, at the start of COVID. He explained Hugo was part of the Northern Region Primary Service Area (PSA) that included eight other cities. He talked about how their ambulances were not static, and they used algorithms and analyzed data and stats to have the shortest arrival times and make changes in equipment and staff to accommodate peak periods. They hold meetings with municipal leaders at least once a month to share data, review specific calls, and brainstorm on training needs. Dunn reviewed statistics of the entire PSA that showed that there were 3,724 ambulance requests with 222 cancelled in process. In the first year they had reached out to neighboring PSAs for