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CITY OF SOUTH BEND OFFICE OF THE CLERK will still be a Capital Fund. The former EMS Capital Fund will be the Fire Department Capital Fund that they will use for their capital purchases, and we believe that that's appropriate given that the Fire Department does have significant capital needs and want to maintain that separate Capital Fund for their needs. Before I invite Chief Cox up, I'd happily entertain any questions you may have about that accounting change. Committee Chair White asked, Council Members, any questions? Thank you for the update, and now we invite Chief Cox to the podium. State your name and address,please. Steve Cox, South Bend Fire Chief, 1222 South Michigan Street stated, Good evening, As Dan mentioned,I'll be presenting today on the Fire Department budget for 2020.As I presented a couple weeks ago, when we were all here as a city discussing the opening remarks from budget hearings, we presented these goals as three(3)of the main goals of the Fire Department we'll be attempting to achieve this upcoming year. One(1) is to achieve an ISO rating of one(1), which is the highest level of risk reduction for the City, risk management for the City as it pertains to the Fire Department and water delivery systems. At the current time, our department, or the City itself, is rated at a two (2). That's on a scale of one (1) to ten (10), with one (1) being the top level and ten (10)virtually being no fire services whatsoever. I want to improve diversity within the department. We've made some strides in that over the last eight(8) years. As one(1)of our department's main goals, we anticipate going through a very robust recruitment program this fall and into the spring. Our next application process will end on March 31St. We've already convened our recruitment team, and we've already began some discussions in regard to that and community events. I think I'm probably going to be making the first(1St) announcement of this right now. We intend on having a public safety job fair at the South Bend Fire Department Training Center on September 18th, from 4:00-7:OOpm. A couple of years ago when we did this, and we had multiple different agencies there, it was a wonderful clearing house for potential applicants to come. Around three- hundred (300) individuals showed up to discuss public safety jobs. We intend on kicking off our recruitment drive with that event on September 1 8th and we're already talking with members of our recruitment team to continue doing other events as well. The other thing that we have at the top of our list,and I'll talk a little bit more about this throughout the presentation,but we want to increase our capacity and the number of patients that we serve, or clients that we serve, for our community,through our Medicine Program. We piloted that program from July of last year through July of this year. We've had tremendous success with the program. We only have one (1) community paramedic performing those duties right now. We propose in this budget to add an additional FTE to enhance or improve the program. Hopefully, with the idea of getting out and serving a minimum of three- hundred (300) different patients next year alone. We have a lot of other ideas with that. I will speak to that shortly. Some changes of our operating budget are that our EMS operating revenues and expenditures are being accounted for in the General Fund, as Dan just mentioned. One (1) of the other points that I'd like to make about that is that allows us to kind of simplify our budget. It's easier to see where everything is going, okay. As it was previously, that was all set up, all of our EMS operating expenses and everything were set up in an Enterprise Fund, which was two-hundred and eighty- seven (287), I believe. And, two-hundred and eighty-seven (287) then only accounted for those things that were assigned to the EMS division. One (1) of the troubles that we had with that the whole time is that our department is an all hazard response department. We don't just respond to EXCELLENCE ACCOUNTABILITY INNOVATION I INCLUSION EMPOWERMENT 455 County-City Building 227W.Jefferson Bvld South Bend,Indiana 46601 p 574.235.9221 f 574.235.9173 TTD574.235.5567 www.southbendin.gov 2