Staff Reports

Photo of Public Safety Academy recruits and Support Services Volunteer Mike Bilbo

Calls for Service Analysis

As of the report date, we are on call #706 for the year. We are currently averaging 4.55 calls per day with an annual pace of 1662.

Staffing

This month, we lost a couple of our key part-time employees as they accepted full-time offers from other agencies. Although we are happy for them, we are saddened to be losing them. We are now evaluating our current hiring pool and will be adding positions soon.

Strategic Planning and Post Tax Initiative

Now that the tax initiative is over, we are adjusting our focus on other projects that took a back seat. Our strategic plan is about 75% complete, but we need to make changes based on our updated outlooks. Not much will change in our staffing and front-line apparatus, as they were part of our highest priorities.

We have presented the resiliency plan to our command staff and at the monthly all hands staff meeting and will now email the presentations for everyone to have another chance to review. We were able to incorporate the changes suggested by the board as well. We plan to implement all aspects of the plan starting July 1st, 2025.

I was able to talk with the Coroner’s Office and with both Law Enforcement agencies about minimizing our services as part of our first phase. I will be following it up with an official email to the leadership of each agency. None of them seemed too upset with the impending changes.

Facilities

• General

  • Currently, the focus is on general maintenance and repairs of all of the buildings.
  • The First In project is working and seems to be consistent. We still have a couple of final cut sheet items but overall, we are operational.
  • We are still having some drainage issues with the sewer line project at Station 271. All of this rain is making it very hard to establish grass and vegetation. The contractor is going to come back out and regrade the drainage so that it follows a different path to our detention pond.

ELCO Fire Chiefs

ELCO Chiefs have been completely preoccupied over the last 2 months. I think each of the separate departments are having their own urgent issues and have been focused on fixing them. We will be meeting this month, and I believe our biggest issue will be to monitor the OEM hiring process.

We have also scheduled a helicopter awareness training for June 25th with the Douglas County Helitak. This training will go over direct fill, calling in drops, and air-to-ground communications. I’m thinking the training will be in Elizabeth but we haven’t nailed down a venue yet.

Community Leaders and Area Managers (CLAMS)

CLAMS will be meeting this week. I anticipate getting updates on the Town’s Main Street project, and the number of staffing changes at the County.

Elbert County Communication Authority (ECCA)

ECCA executed an agreement with Perry Lundquist as the replacement administrator. With Jim White leaving, the ECCA board will have to step up on their involvement if we want to look at any change in direction. Kara and I would like to see ECCA focus more on 911-related measures and manage less radio infrastructure. In order to accomplish that, we need to find a way to change ownership of the towers in our area. This will be a tough job but will release ECCA funds to do other things.

Legislative

As excited as we were to see what the Governor would be doing to help the FPDs across the state, it was not surprising that nothing, zero, zilch came out of the legislature as promised. The Colorado Fire Chiefs were duped. My only hope is that they learned their lesson and choose not to trust the state any more.

I haven’t started my letter to the community and state government yet due to the many other issues going on, but I plan to very soon. I wouldn’t expect many results from the letter as I don’t have much influence over those organizations. Some cats are allergic to humans.

Chiefs Summit

I took it upon myself to schedule a meeting with as many Fire Chiefs in Eastern Colorado as possible. I wanted to get chiefs together that otherwise wouldn’t be able to attend a conference or training. The concept has gained some momentum and our first annual Eastern Colorado Chiefs Summit will occur on June 21st in Limon. We already have over 30 people signed up and may have to find a larger venue. I’m looking forward to hearing what the Chiefs out East have to say about our situation in Colorado.

Photo of Chief Steck teaching during the Public Safety Academy

Prevention/Administration

• The Public Safety Academy went great this year. Firefighter/EMT Brittany McGhee was the lead instructor and ran the program for the week. They had a great time and learned about being a public servant and firefighting. We will be making a video of the week and will present it to the board at the July meeting.
• In an effort to get off the server, I had a company quote services to change from our server management to M365 in the cloud. The quote came back very high, so I worked with our IT and found an option for me to convert the files to the cloud myself. All of the admin staff are on the cloud platform, and we will need to migrate command staff at the next meeting. We are then putting a plan together for all of our shared files and department files to be stored in the cloud as well, but I really need a 3rd party to make sure the files are secure and are set up right on the cloud. Just as a note, the server is failing, and we need to get this conversion done before it fails.
• I was able to teach as part of the Student Academy and the firefighter academy. Both learned about fire investigations and the roles of the firefighter in fire investigations.
• We are sad to see Erin Loeks go, but we have moved some of her responsibilities to Ryan and some to Brooklyn, our intern. I will continue to promote education in the schools and will be teaching more until we figure out a plan. Ryan has taken over scheduling some of the station tours and school activities, and Brooklyn will help to order swag that we need for the welcome basket and elderly programs in the Town.
• With the absence of a permanent OEM director, we have played a large hand in the planning and mitigation for The Stampede. We have had many collaboration meetings, and we are as ready as can be for any large events that the weekend may bring.
• Chief and I attended The Pines HOA meeting to explain to them about our Colorado State Forest Mitigation Grant, mitigation and home hardening, and operational tactics if there was a fire on the ridge. The HOA was very appreciative for the information and some registered to join the grant.

Fire Prevention Specialist (Ryan Seng)

• Currie from the State Forest Service gave us an update on the grant. One subdivision decided to pull out their common area from being treated. Currie’s planning on including more homeowners to make up for the lost acreage. In addition, she’s completed the assessments on all the interested properties and is planning on inviting contractors in the next few weeks to bid for the scope of work. She says that they are moving much faster than anticipated, with mitigation work possibly starting as early as late summer this year.
• Self-Inspections were sent out to 60 businesses at the beginning of June. We have already had several business owners complete their self-inspections and send them back.
• Shifts have completed 11% of their inspections so far with 7% of their preplans completed.
• I’m continuing construction site inspections at Independence. While the filing 2 area has completed their homes, filing 4 is starting to see heavy construction traffic. Keeping the roads and hydrants clear continues to be a consistent issue.

Pre-Application Meetings

Photo of Pre-Application Meetings

Photos of Public Safety Academy recruits training and classroom learning

In the month of May, the election didn’t go our way, but we still look good for this year and the next. With the 2026 budget season coming up, we will look over our needs to create a budget that lives within our means.

We interviewed a potential new babysitting instructor. We will see what happens with this position with our Risk Reduction Specialist leaving at the end of the month.

We are also bringing on 3 new candidates for reserve in June. Two of our candidates in the academy resigned due to acquiring jobs in other departments, and two part-time employees are resigning due to new jobs as well. We will be promoting a few candidates to work part-time from our hiring list.

As of the end of May, we have collected 56% of our property taxes levied. I have been able to invest a little over $2M in our term accounts with CSIP. In the month of June, the interest rates are up a little bit so I will be able to get a little better return on our investments. I will continue to review the rates to see how our return on investment grows.

EMS collection for May $36,334.72

Development and Impact Fees:

Zone 1 $500,120.62

Zone 2 $17,364.15

Zone 3 $18,416.05

Gift Agreement $306,833.80

Infrastructure Fund $96,330.00

• The new Type 1 and Type 3 are still on track. I met with Front Range Fire last week to go over the graphics for the Type 3. The intent is to try to match the current apparatus as close as possible.
• The rest of the apparatus continue to be in good shape with no major repairs needed. We are still working with fleet to get apparatus in for scheduled PMs.
• I still have no update on when the CAD to CAD integration will fully take place. The last news I had was that there was a programming issue with the hub, which is the software that talks between the two CAD programs. This issue was sent back to the developer and was reportedly fixed, but it has not been implemented yet.
• The operations plan for this year’s Elizabeth Stampede Rodeo has been completed and distributed to the crews, dispatch, and surrounding agencies. I have let our mutual aid partners know that we will have limited availability to provide aid this weekend and might need to call on them for resources in the case of a major event.
• I had the opportunity to respond on a technical rescue call type with two members of our team last week. While the victim was self-extricated when we arrived on scene, I was impressed by the team being ready to act and having the equipment and knowledge to perform the needed rescue. This group has shown great motivation to their training and professionalism!

• The academy continues to plug away on their skills. Losing three of the cadets was a bummer for the agency, but I think it is beneficial to the current cadets. The instructors are able to give the cadets more reps with practicing skills. They will soon start the live fire evolutions, and I think they are pretty excited to get started on those skills.
• Our members continue to take advantage of outside trainings. We have folks who have taken Fire Officer I, Methodology/Instructor I, Ground Ladders, and Aggressive Search.
• The NFA classes are back in swing; we have four members attending classes in June and also in the fall.
• I'm finally getting some training relationships lined out with ECSO. Deputy Rathbun has asked to use the forcible entry prop at Station 273 in June. I think this will be a good way to break the ice and form a relationship with the crews. He invited the on-duty crew to attend. I'm also going to get with Deputy Klauser after the Stampede to talk about a large-scale training with multiple agencies in the County.

Photo of crews during tech rescue training

Photo of Academy recruits training

Photo of crews during a training on autism patients during emergency calls

• Lt. Regan attended our SEMTAC review for the EMTS auto loader grant. The reviewers didn't have many questions, which is usually a good thing, and the ones they did have he answered very well. Thanks, Brenden, for heading this project up! We should have an answer on this one sometime in August.
• I got an update from MEDIX on our new ambulance build. Looks like it'll go into production sometime early February and be ready for delivery towards the end of May.
• First-In…..Well as usual, nothing is ever as easy as it seems. As I said in the last update, we had an internet issue with Station 272 which has been resolved thanks to Chief Gerczynski. Now we're again at the mercy of Douglas dispatch to make the connection. Also, there are apparently grounding issues with our 800mhz antennas which was allowing other frequencies (specifically 850 KOA) to bleed through the system; this is being corrected. On a positive note, the system is working for Stations 271 and 273. Once we get all the bugs and kinks worked out, a policy will be developed to outline normal and contingency operations of the system.
• We finally received the update from ImageTrend to start our NERIS configuration. This also will be quite the undertaking and I'll have a better update next month, but honestly we're already ahead of the game since we were chosen as an early adopter agency.
• Paramedic Sugg attended a PHTLS class that was very educational. Fun fact, (unknown to us at the time of registration) our new part-time paramedic Tim Snyder was the instructor for the class…small world. Travis said Tim did an amazing job!

EMS Calls (excluding "no patient"):

• May 2024 = 78 (53 Transports/68%)
• May 2025 = 73 (57 Transports/78%)

"Shout out to FF Brittany McGhee for doing an amazing job with the inaugural Fire Service portion of the Public Service Academy. Great Job Brittany!"

Photos of crews during a mock car accident

This year, our new year's resolution is to help our community get to know us better! We’ve introduced a new item to our social media accounts, titled “Firefighter Friday,” where, every Friday, we introduce another member of our staff to our community. This has been very well received by the members of our District. Below are the Firefighter Friday highlights for the month of May.

This month, we highlighted Reserve Firefighter Dan Flesner, Lieutenant Adam Neisen, Reserve Firefighter EMT Caitlin McGhee, Part-Time Firefighter EMT Corey Bossart, and Human Resources Generalist - Executive Assistant Taylor Clark!