Portland committee explores overdose prevention centers, cruise ship health protocols

[0:04] Anna Bullett: We good, Adam? Thank you. Good evening, everybody. You have found your way to the May meeting of the Portland City Council's Health, Human Services, and Public Safety Committee. It is the 12th, and we are all here just waiting on one more member. So I am Anna Bullett. I am the chair of the committee. I represent District 4, and I will have the other committee members introduce themselves, and then we will have the staff introduce themselves, and then we will jump into our agenda. So, Councillor Michniewicz, do you want to go? [0:40] Sarah Michniewicz: Councillor Michniewicz, District 1. [0:45] Anna Bullett: And Councillor Pelletier? [0:48] Wesley Pelletier: Councillor Pelletier, District 2, and Transit to Wanda. [0:53] Anna Bullett: Great. And Councillor Fournier is also a member of the committee and hopes to be here soon. Director McLaughlin, do you want to have everybody introduce themselves? Sure, I'm Maggie McLaughlin, I'm the director of Health and Human Services Department. I will pass it over to Bridget. Good [1:13] Bridget Rousher: evening, everyone. I am Bridget Rousher, I'm the director of Public Health for the city of Portland, and Mary, do you want to go ahead? Mary Christie, associate corporation [1:23] Chad Johnston: counsel, and I'll pass it to you, Chief. Yeah, Chad Johnston, I'm the fire chief, and I think I'm the final. [1:38] Anna Bullett: Oh, you're on mute, Councillor Bullett. I will always be remiss if I don't also make sure that we mention Adam Parr, who is making sure that our technology runs and that everyone can participate in this meeting effortlessly. So the first item on our agenda is to approve the meeting minutes from last month. If I could get a motion, that would be fantastic. So moved. Councillor Pelletier, can you second it, or do you need me to? second sorry i lost the screen that's okay moved by counselor mcnovich seconded by counselor pellets here counselor mcnovich how do you vote yes and counselor villas here yes and i am a yes thank you so much so we've approved the minutes from april and so the next item on our agenda you will see doesn't have anything to support it in the backup i did like about five minutes ago, send some articles to my colleagues on the council. But this, I brought this forward, and this is overdose prevention centers. As many of you are aware, last year, Gordon Smith on a panel along with Tess Parks and some other folks from the world of the opioid prevention and opioid response from the state government and from other community partners. And what we have heard overwhelmingly is that there's more to be done to not just prevent death from overdose, but to keep people alive until they can get to a detox bed and get to recovery, if that's their goal. And I became aware of a pilot program in Rhode Island that required the changing of state law, but is a harm reduction model that's supported by the state and local governments and does include supervised safe injection with wraparound services administered by a partner who got the RFP from the public health department. There's tons of evidence to support this dating back into the early 2000s. I became really interested because I'm very, I'm always looking for root causes. And so one of the things I think all of us on the council hear a lot from our constituents about is people who are in active drug use, using drugs, you know, in public or needle waste or people who have been affected by drugs out in the community, dysregulated, you know, disturbing the peace. And so as I've dug deeper and deeper and spent a lot of time with folks in this space I thought well if people are using drugs and they're using them in public but they can't stop using them immediately because they either don't want to or because there's no option for a safe stoppage at the moment what's the other solution and that's what led me to be doing a lot of research about overdose prevention centers. And so my hope is that I can get a gut check from my colleagues on this committee to see if this is something that we have interest in asking. It'll be Corporation Council, which is why Mary is here today, to research what it means, right? What it would take for us. Because when there's legalities involved, we can't just start something in our city without making sure that we have the go-ahead from our partners at the state and at the county. I just spoke a lot, and so I would love to hear either from you, Councilor Michniewicz, or from Councilor Pelletier, like I said, like a gut check on if you think this is a worthwhile use of staff time to start researching. [5:44] Sarah Michniewicz: Yeah, I'll go. Yeah, I mean, it is hard because clearly there's not a ton of precedent you know it's knowing the legal landscape of course is it's kind of the very base level that we have to figure out before we would even consider something like this i do think there's there's more information that needs to be discussed or at least looked at on the impacts to any areas around a site like you know that 's going to be working in that way. You know, the statistics tend to show that there's no reduction, that there's no increase in crime, but it also doesn't show a reduction. So I think, you know, when people think about the level of disorder or the issues that are causing the concerns that you just kind of listed, you know, the thinking of them as remaining the status quo, even though we're providing a service that's intended to help folks, doesn't necessarily resonate. So I think that's a that's an important thing that we would need to look at and to understand what to expect and if for you know it does occur to me that if we're if we were to go down this road there may need to be changes to how the level of I don't think tolerance is the right word but for folks who you know are openly using in public you know if that's part of the concern what 's going to help them want to go inside a facility and you know kind of use in a structured space when you know a lot of the situations that we see now are folks, you know, being where they're comfortable in the in the community and, you know, how do you how do you reroute that and also how do you make sure that the surrounding area is getting the attention it deserves without driving people who would be using that service away by making them feel, you know, policed or unsafe. So those are just some of the things that I think about. I don't think the science is particularly in doubt. I think some of those other factors are what the community kind of needs to feel some confidence that this would be effective at achieving the goals that we've set out. [7:59] Anna Bullett: That was incredibly well articulated. Thank you. That was really, helpful. Counselor Pelletier. [8:08] Wesley Pelletier: Yeah, I mean, short answer, I am emphatically in support of this. And if there's not a precedent, I'm very interested in creating a precedent. I think that bringing people in from the cold and creating spaces where people can use drugs while getting access to support that can hopefully get them off of drugs and not create that barrier between, you know, being addicted to drugs and getting the help you need. Or we can reduce that and hopefully get people into a better place is incredibly important and I think that it's very logical for this to work so please proceed all [9:05] Anna Bullett: Right that sounds great and I do think like Counselor McNovich said figuring out the legal landscape is probably step one to anything like this and then of course other things after that, would include Bridget's department and obviously community engagement, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Mary, do you have questions for us? [9:27] Bridget Rousher: No, I spoke briefly with Maggie, Dr. [9:30] Anna Bullett: And we kind of get the gist of what we're looking at. [9:33] Bridget Rousher: So I'll start looking into the landscape and get back to the committee. [9:39] Anna Bullett: Fantastic. Well, that was relatively painless. So thank you, everybody. And again, this is just like a step one on a very long road of a possible thing. So I appreciate the engagement and I appreciate Mary being here tonight on behalf of the Corporation Council's office. The next item on our agenda, I am going to request that we postpone. And so I this doesn't have a vote, so we don't need to make it formal, but I guess a verbal OK. Councilor Pelletier, are you okay if we postpone the day space conversation? I'm okay. And Councilor Michniewicz? Yes, that's fine. Thank you. Thank you. We're just not prepared to have this conversation. There's other conversations happening in other committees that predicate this, what we could potentially do in this committee. So moving on, we have Bridget Rauscher here today from the Public Health Department to talk about cruise ship infectious disease. This is an issue that has been brought to us from multiple community members. And so there's been a memo that was prepared and it's attached to the packet. And I will turn it over to Bridget. [10:57] Bridget Rousher: Great. Thank you so much. Good evening, everyone. Thanks for inviting me to talk about this. You all have access to the memo, but I'm just going to kind of quickly review it and then give, you know, obviously any questions you have or discussion we can certainly have. have. So I will hop right in and just, you know, just want to kind of identify the fact that outbreaks of common infectious diseases on cruise ships are actually not unusual and are managed through established federal and state public health protocols. So infectious disease outbreaks on cruise ships are primarily associated with acute gastroenteritis, or AGE. And most commonly, that would be norovirus, as well as respiratory infections such as COVID and influenza and other vaccine-preventable diseases, and a common one there would be varicella, or chickenpox. The close quarters and shared environments on these vessels can really increase exposure to the infections. And although that is true, the risk is also present to the general public. Infectious diseases like norovirus and influenza also tend to be somewhat predictable, as there is a seasonality to them in a lot of areas. So cruise ships are subject to mandatory reporting of notifiable diseases, which are a subset of diseases with higher risk to the general public. And these outbreaks require reporting to the Federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention through either their Vessel Sanitation Program or the Division of Global Migration Health when illness levels on board meet or exceed established thresholds. So based on the infection that is present, there are different levels of, there are different thresholds of percentage of people who are experiencing symptoms, et cetera, that kind of activate a notification. These programs will then take responsibility for establishing reporting thresholds, as these can change again, based on the number of passengers, specific illnesses, et cetera. So once they have specifics about what the illness is, they'll make some decisions. These federal agencies are also responsible for monitoring outbreaks and then providing public reporting and guidance. And so in the case of a cruise ship with a reportable infectious disease outbreak coming to Portland, the U.S. Port Health Station in Boston would be notified and would actually work with the main CDC to coordinate if a response is required. And so there are 20 such health stations in the U.S., in ports throughout the U.S., that do something similar. Our closest one is Boston, so that's who we would work with, or that's who the Maine CDC would work with. And then under Maine law, the Maine Center for Disease Control has primary authority for the surveillance, investigation, and control of communicable diseases, including these outbreaks of acute gastroenteritis, like norovirus. within the city of portland the harbormaster does have the authority to redirect ships and while laws ordinances and regulations pertaining to conditions detrimental to life or health can be enforced by the director of health and human services or their appointee the main cdc is the lead entity on infectious disease surveillance and reporting sorry surveillance and reporting and they are staffed accordingly for that purpose The public health division for Portland, as you know, one of only two local health departments in the state, so we would serve in a supportive role, focusing on community education and outreach, risk communication to the public, and then coordination with state and federal partners as that's deemed necessary, frankly, by them. And so specific to norovirus, is a highly contagious virus that spreads easily through person to person contact, also through contaminated surfaces and contaminated food or water. And so norovirus can cause symptoms like nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, stomach cramping, symptoms usually beginning 12 to 20, sorry, 12 to 48 hours after exposure and generally lasting one to three days for most people. Overwhelmingly norovirus resolves on its own without medication, but with self-care including hydration, and it is generally mild, resolving completely and without long-term effects. There are of course populations that could be at a higher risk of complications, for example dehydration, and those people may be young children, elderly individuals, or those with a weakened immune system. Individuals are most contagious while they are symptomatic, but can continue shedding the virus for several days after they resolve their symptoms. What's important to note here is individual cases of norovirus are not considered reportable, but suspected outbreaks, which would be the case on a cruise ship, are reportable. So at the individual level, we are not tracking and monitoring norovirus. In an effort to align with established public health practices and with input from the Vessel Sanitation Program, Portland Public Health proposes to kind of do the following. Because what I think is important to note is that prior to, you know, this sort of sentinel event last October, we did not have a, we didn't have a protocol in place for this. We did not, you know, obviously there isn't anything established to intervene. intervene. And so that was sort of a trial, you know, trial situation. So what we would propose moving forward is a combination of what really the local public health department is intended to do. And that includes general education and outreach. So general education would include semi-annual educational campaigns, highlighting the importance of broad prevention and control measures, which would include proper hand hygiene, surface cleaning, regular surface cleaning, reminding people to stay home when they're sick if they can, right? You know, it's not, it's easier said than done for some. And then we would provide additional resources to access, you know, other information, perhaps that, you know, business owners, for example, can share with employees that, you know, there's lots of print offs that can be posted, that would basically be a one on one on infectious disease prevention, that would be a little bit more broad. We would also implement targeted education, which would include increased outreach to the downtown business community and residential community prior to and throughout sort of the busiest tourist season, and of course through like cruise ship season. This would be done in collaboration with Portland Downtown. We've had a conversation about utilizing, you know, them to kind of blast information out to their subscribers, their email list, the downtown town community, and also Portland cruise control. They have many subscribers that could receive the information this way. When there is an outbreak, if in the event that a cruise ship with, an outbreak of an infectious disease that meets the reportable threshold, right? So there is a reporting threshold. They don't have to report for one individual. It is generally a two to three percent minimum of folks with symptoms. The public health division would then provide this notification and relevant updates via, you know, the public health division web page, the city's social media channels, and then direct communication similar to the mechanism I just described in collaboration with our partners at Portland Downtown and Portland Cruise Control, and perhaps others as this kind of develops. But, you know, it is certainly, you know, there's certainly a growing interest in increasing our communications and protocols as they relate to infectious disease and cruise ships. And so Portland Public Health is really well poised to support this kind of communication. It's also really important to remember that statutory authority and associated resources and regulations for managing outbreaks really lies predominantly with the federal and state CDC, again, with the public health division playing a supporting role. They're not, you know, it's important to note that cruise ships are not mandated to notify the local health department. They're mandated to notify vessel sanitation, who then communicates with the state health department. And then from there, it would be unlikely that the main CDC would not contact us, highly unlikely, but that is actually the mechanism that they would use. Vessel sanitation would report to the state health department. They would work together and involve the local health department as needed. And then so also important to note that due to the high transmissibility, short incubation period, really the widespread environmental transmission and high volume of cases of norovirus, individual contact tracing or even outbreak tracing by the public health division really wouldn't be possible and nor is it recommended. It would be way too challenging to track down any kind of exposure points off of a vessel, of course. And then further, the most common types of acute gastroenteritis, including norovirus, are not considered to be at the heightened level of risk of a public health emergency. Emergency, so general prevention education is a really helpful and really sort of appropriate step for something like this. And so the, you know, the division will plan to deepen our focus on infectious disease prevention communication again at the start of each tourist season and then throughout the season as reminders, just like we do with influenza, you know, flu season, in terms of getting your vaccine and staying home if you're sick and all of those things that we do. And then again, notifications where relevant and when relevant on the city's website, social media channels, and direct outreach to downtown business owners and residents in the event of a docking ship with outbreak status that we've been notified of. I also, you know, in terms of what we, what was and wasn't included in this memo here. There is sort of, I really believe in education, particularly around prevention is more effective than the potential of inciting fear that is unnecessary for folks who maybe don't understand how these things kind of work, how quickly they move through a community or a household or, you know, et cetera. So I really, I'm happy to answer questions about that or anything else that I've presented, but that's kind of the overview of what you have in front of you. [21:48] Anna Bullett: Thank you so much, director. That was really articulated well, and it was just very comprehensive. I will turn it to my colleagues for questions. I do, not to put him on blast, but I do also just wanna thank the Harbormaster for being at this meeting. I know that he's on the attendee side. So thank you for being here this evening to watch us do this. So to my colleagues, go ahead, counselor Pelletier [22:18] Wesley Pelletier: Yes, thank you, very thorough, and also shout out to the harbor must. Two questions. The first is in the memo, it looked like there was a distinction between international versus domestic cruises in terms of, you know, what we would potentially alert for. Can you explain [22:41] Bridget Rousher: find that. Sorry, it may be a little bit unclear. It's cruise ships with a, an international stop on their itinerary report into the vessel sanitation program, which has very clear and strict mandates for how things are reported. Cruise ships with a domestic only itinerary report in through a, I'm, the, it's escaping me right now, a division of global health, migration health, something like that. So they just, they report in just differently, and I think that is in part because of the potential for other Infectious diseases that can happen more with international stops, and so there's just a bit of a different focus. So it really is about how we would, how the state would be notified, and they kind of go through different avenues. I know that's not like super clear, but no, that makes more sense. Yeah, it was a little tricky to actually [23:38] Wesley Pelletier: track down how to report. So basically, like if there's an outbreak, regardless of domestic or international, and we obviously we get the information, we treat it the same, right? Yeah, I [23:50] Bridget Rousher: mean, of course, like there can be, yes, depending on what the infection is, so right, like what the disease is that's being managed, and that is again if they take the, if they take the step to notify us. I just, I want to just kind of manage expectations around there. We cannot control [24:08] Wesley Pelletier: them. Correct. Very understood. And then the second question is, has there been thought put into utilizing the cities like, text blast system, like news alerts updates or anything like [24:22] Bridget Rousher: that? Yeah, we actually, we have put a lot of thought and conversation into that, and where we, the where we have landed is that there is, again, my concern around sort of inciting unnecessary fear, particularly depending on when a ship is going to come into port, how many cases they have at 15 days out versus two days out. But also, I just completely lost my train of thought. Give me one second. So, yes, we don't want to incite unnecessary fear. Fear. Oh, the other piece is that we don't do this for any other mode of transportation. And I realize that cruise ships are large and there's a lot of people, but we also have, you know, international flights. We have large buses, trains, et cetera, coming in and out. You know, people travel by car and go, you know, go to New York City and could come back sick and spread it in the same way. And we know that on cruise ships, those people who are symptomatic are actually being isolated. And so they actually already have a built-in control mechanism that these other modes of transportation don't necessarily take into consideration. There are some for air travel, but we would not apply that broadly because we wouldn't have the capacity to do so. [25:40] Wesley Pelletier: I'm going to push back a little bit on the cruise ships. Are, I think that these are very different modes of transportation for a lot of reasons. So I don't know that the litmus test of do we do this for any other, you know, trains aren't disembarking in Congress in Commercial Street to go traveling or to visit all of our shops, and same with planes, obviously, and, you know, cars. So I don't know that one really makes that much sense. And I do hear you on inciting fear, but I do think, you know, as someone who's caught norovirus downtown, I think letting people know outweighs that. I don't think we'll have rioting the streets, you know? But I do think, you know, it's the same level as letting people know that there's going to be a snow ban or weekly news roundup or anything like that, you know. If there does become like a huge outbreak of fear, maybe we can revisit, but I do think it would make a lot of sense just to use that right once there is a higher risk of norovirus downtown. I think is it's pretty understandable. And maybe, you know, we look at that threshold for where that warning is, but you know, I think our constituents are pretty reasonable. I think they could probably handle that information. And again, I do think cruise ships are a different form of transportation. [27:16] Bridget Rousher: That's fair. We can, we can agree to disagree on that one, but I think that what's important is that we perhaps have a conversation around an opt-in alert for that versus a push to the entire community, particularly when we are thinking specifically about downtown. And so I would, you know, I would like to explore that option if that's what you're sort of [27:38] Wesley Pelletier: desiring. Yeah. I mean, all of ours are opt-in right now, right? [27:43] Bridget Rousher: I don't actually know the [27:44] Wesley Pelletier: answer to that. Yeah. You gotta, you gotta subscribe to them. So I think like, as they are all opt-in, you know, and we have one for like news updates, like it would be awesome if the city could just do an Amber Alert, but we can't. So, you know, I think it might be worth utilizing that. [28:04] Bridget Rousher: Right. I get, I get what you're saying that everything is opt-in, but like maybe not everybody, like does all of North Deering need to know? Everybody who subscribes to the other news updates need to know if a ship is coming into or want to know, right? Like having, I really would like to, you know, have a conversation about just like preserving that method, but certainly we can, we can look into how it would work and what would be the most effective way to reach people. [28:29] Wesley Pelletier: Sounds good. Yeah. I do think text alerts on some level, whether it's a new channel or utilize an existing one, either way I could live with that. [28:39] Anna Bullett: Thanks counselor. And I would, just to add to that, I would make sure that we'd want to include the business community before making any decisions or any actions and just, you know, check with all the small business owners too, and see if that's something that makes sense, on their end. Councillor McNovich, great, thank you. And yeah, thank you for that presentation. [28:59] Sarah Michniewicz: Bridget, that was really thorough. All of the questions that kept coming up for me kept getting answered, so well done on that. I think the point on alerts, I can see both ways. The risk I would say in this case of the city not doing some kind of alert if people are interested in opting in is that other sources may convey that information in a way that's not maybe as straightforward as the city might present it. So just in terms of, you know, how that message is getting out there and being factual about it, I can see a case for getting a, getting ahead of, you know, some rumors or things that are making people more concerned than they, than they need to be. But I would just put that out there. And I do appreciate the sensitivity to working with businesses in downtown. Because obviously, if there's some kind of panic or overreaction that could drive down business, that would be difficult. But obviously, the public health piece has to be taken seriously in relation to the business needs. So I appreciate your way of thinking about that. Yeah, I think that's a, that's about it. I really, I do appreciate all the [30:20] Anna Bullett: all the effort you've put into this, covered a lot of it. All right, thank you. Thanks counselor. And I have a silly question that you might not be able to answer, it might be a director Hippo question, but are there, when people disembark off of the ships, are there any, is it just like, okay, bye. Or is there like a hand sanitation station that they have to, or hand washing station that they have to go to before they move on to their next adventure? So actually [30:52] Bridget Rousher: This has come up. There are hand washing stations available. I think it's, you know, you can't necessarily force everybody to wash their hands, but there is, there is the potential to add temporary hand washing stations. If we get, if we find ourselves in this situation in the future where we could make it a little bit easier, you know, smaller lines, maybe to wait to wash your hands if people are disembarking. But yes, that is, it is present and possible to expand. [31:19] Anna Bullett: I think it would be a fun thing to bring the water district into such a potential initiative too, since they're the ones with the water. But just knowing what I know about infectious disease and like knowing how important hand-washing is and how bad so many people are at it, just seems like low-hanging fruit potentially just to remind people to wash their hands. I mean, remember, like, it wasn't that long ago that doctors did not wash their hands in hospitals, right? So like, we've already come really far in public health with hand washing and we could go even further. If there's no other questions for Bridget, we can move on to our next agenda item. But before we let her go, I will just do an awkward eight seconds just in case. All right, I made it to four seconds. Seeing none, we will, we will move on to the next on our agenda this evening. Thank you so much, Bridget, really truly appreciate it, and I'm sure that if people have questions they will follow up as well, and we look forward to seeing the communication our communications department does an excellent job, so I think this will be a great season with some good education. Great, thank you. Next tonight on our agenda is the fire. Are you ready to give us your public safety update for the month? Did [32:45] Chad Johnston: you call me in or I didn't cut out for, I sure did, it's your turn. Perfect, Adam, are you all set to share that presentation? So tonight what we'll do is it's actually going to be relatively quick, but we'll go through what our last quarter has looked like. We've actually got some interesting data that goes back quite a ways. So go ahead and go to the next slide, Adam. So what I was just gonna spend a little bit of time talking about is number one, we just went to a new reporting system, which isn't City of Portland reporting system, but it's actually nationwide. All fire departments across the nation have been reporting to what was called the NFERS platform, which was National Fire Incident Reporting System. That is upwards of 75 years old. The federal government revamped it and basically nationwide, we all went live on January 1st of this year. So in coming, in the immediate future, our comparisons are going to be a little difficult because our reporting has definitely changed. However, what I can tell you is we're into the second quarter. And as a whole, I do like it. I do feel like we're going to have some better targets over time. But it'll be hard to compare actual incident types versus we can still compare actual calls for service because that number is a known and that's what I'm looking at. So when you look at this slide, you'll see that our new reporting system breaks it into to seven classifications. But again, I don't have any data to prospect back about what it looked like last year. But if you look for the total of 2026, you'll see that first quarter, we ran 4,500 runs. That's actually slightly less than last year's total. So we're on track to be slightly under. However, there's a couple of things that add into that. One, you can see that the second and third quarters are usually generally slightly higher. And then the fourth quarter goes back and we can obviously relate that to population. People are outside more, people are doing more things. So I'd be interested to see that if we actually come in below at the end of the year. In regards for that, where it falls in the classification, I don't have I don't have a lot of good numbers to tell you why they're falling there, but I do know that it's probably very accurate. One of the things that I am interested in is the fact that we do show slightly, you know, 10% less than, not 10%, probably 5% less than last year's quarter. I am going to do some double checking to make sure that our runs are getting reported effectively. Because this, as you can understand, this comes all through the dispatch center, starts it in the ProPhoenix CAD, and then we capture it. But I've got to obviously, I've got to make sure that every run that we are going on is pushing across as we would expect it to. But that just kind of gives you a general persona. on and I can, you know, that's what will probably be those seven categories is what we'll be reporting on for quarters to come for the foreseeable future. Go ahead, Adam, go to the second slide. So this is an interesting graph I hadn't reported on before, but it's an interesting point of data. So when you look at the left, you can see, you know, what are the total citywide calls that we send ambulances on. The middle one is our fire companies. And then the third one over is our specialty companies, which the specialty companies are the airport, the Marine Division, our heavy rescue company, and our EMS fly car. So you can see that generally they're all increasing a little or maintaining over the last four years. In general principle, we usually do see about a three percent increase every year. I'd like to think that some point that might start to plateau, but I have no good reason to think it's going to plateau because of only what it's done for the last ever so. That those are just some interesting data points to look at. Go ahead, Adam, and this graph is the actual individual company and I just my eye went right to the what should be ladder four, but it's a ladder dollar sign, so I'm guessing I hit the shift key and didn't even to notice. But these are the individual companies that are, you know, when we're looking at, we run five ambulances, four engine companies, four ladder companies, like we talked about the specialties, we have the heavy rescue and C9, which is our paramedic flight car. On the end, you'll see the MedQ9. That is our sixth ambulance that we have been for the last going on two years. We've been staffing that what we call peak hours, which is Monday through Friday, eight to five. You'll see that 's where that volume resides and all of them they're all over the place but nobody's doing anything crazy dramatic other than you know sticking with the pace that we're on or maybe even increasing a little go ahead adam this is when we talk about the transports actual med cube units actually going to calls and actually taking people to the hospital you can see that these numbers do increase and you might look at 2020 and i know i brought it up before but just to remind everyone if you were to put that back in line, that would have explained where COVID went. So in COVID, right, we saw a reduction in people being in the city, reduction of people doing things. So 2020, we saw quite a reduction, and then it slowly came back. But if you were to push 2020 up a little, and 2021 up a little, you'd see that natural incline of that 3% every year. Again, we're on track this year for be just under, I don't know that I believe that, but we'll see as the year goes on. Go ahead, Adam. And this is the one that I talked about, and this one's going to be hard to read, but it is interesting to look at, but one of our pieces of data that we actually have, we have, for anybody that's never been to the fire museum on Spring Street, you want to try and go there. We have some of the best artifact and some of the best data and collection of stuff because of this great history that we have in the city that's been around for so much longer than some other parts of the country. But when you look at this, is nearly 90 years of data. And you can see right in the midst of it, you see where the red columns are our fire runs. And they almost maintain, when you look at it across the board, if you went back into the 50s and 60s, it started to come out and start to rise. And then we've more or less stayed in that general principle. But also, you can clearly see that in 1975, when we put the first two ambulances on to what is now five ambulances, you can see where we took on this also this other part of large workload that now crests around 20,000 calls for service. And again, I would expect that to continue to rise and maintain for the next decade. So this doesn't really tell us a lot other than I just thought it was really an interesting piece of data that we were already sitting on that I thought would be interesting to share with you guys. Go ahead, Adam. And this resides around what our FTEs look like. And the reason that I brought it up is because I think it's very interesting when you look. I just did this by five-year increments. This is our total authorized. And you can kind of see that the fire department really, as a whole in numbers, hasn't changed. It might fluctuate five to ten FTEs, and that's going back as far as 1980. But when you look at our workload, our workload has done nothing but increase. So I think it just wants to give you a little bit of comfort zone to understand that the fire department has done nearly everything it can do to become more efficient and do more work with the same amount of employees. So I kind of I like to share that in that it's a celebration that our efficiency has over the time that I've worked here become immensely better. better. With that being said, I can also, I wouldn't mind sharing with you that we're at the brink. There isn't a lot more efficiencies that's going to allow that increase to continue for decades and decades without doing something. But again, it's just an interesting point of data. And then the last slide, go ahead, Adam, that I'll bring it to is this is what we call seated positions. So this is just a different way of looking at the FTEs, but these are the seats that we fill every day on the ambulances, the fire trucks, the airport, Peaks Island, the fireboat, and our specialty trucks. This is how many, and this again goes back only to the last 25 years, but you can see actually we haven't, that number will fluctuate around a little bit. As you can see, it dropped down to 45 in 2010, and that was more or less after the stock market crashing in 2008 when we really had to clamp down we built it back to 48 then we had to clamp down a little more and now we reside at 46 which is not comfortable but it's where we reside and it's probably being as efficient as we can be so again that's the go ahead adam the last one there's just some data there around what's going on in the fire department and where we live and what we're doing with the resources that we have so welcome to any questions that you might have from that. [43:01] Anna Bullett: Fantastic. Thank you so much for that. Can you tell us which one is C9? [43:06] Chad Johnston: So C9 is our paramedic lieutenant, which is in the fly car, and they run out of central. And what they do is they're more or less an operational assistance to the ambulances and the fire trucks that are on the street. They bring, they're all paramedics. There's one person in that vehicle at all times. So it brings a second paramedic to calls that we need them on. It also brings a senior paramedic. So when we get the real abstract stuff that we have, because as you might understand, our new employees are usually the ones that are staffing the ambulances. So they're our most vulnerable as far as what their comfort zone might be. So it allows them to have a sense of logistical support that exists that helps them throughout when they get into the difficult things. [43:54] Anna Bullett: Fantastic, thanks for that clarification. Do my colleagues have any questions for the sheet? I guess you've covered everything. I had one more question, and then which is, what's a technical [44:08] Chad Johnston: rescue? So a technical rescue is anything that we would do, like it's for us, it's more or less what our heavy rescue does, all the specialized stuff, like it might be rope type rescue or extrication, somebody stuck in a well, or somebody trapped in a vehicle crash that's been mangled, confined space type of stuff, anything that is kind of out of the norm, that we just don't go pick you up from your, you know, from your living room having chest pain, or, you know, somebody fell on the sidewalk. That's not technical, right? This, it's the more abstract stuff. It's typically low volume, but when it happens, it's, it's when we have to be at our best. So that's what we have isolated people that have that next level of specialized training to fit that. Other thing that I hadn't mentioned that falls under that is like the water type rescue, if we have to go out and, you know, if we have a kayaker in trouble or things like that, or a boat that might capsize, or [45:08] Anna Bullett: that would fall into that category also. Thanks so much. I was definitely envisioning a cat and a kitten in a tree, because here's cat keep crossing the screen and you're talking. Okay, thank you very much. Very helpful. Questions for the chief. We will release him from his duty to us tonight. Thanks so much. So the, that's it for this evening. Because we postponed that one of the items, we were able to move through the agenda quite quickly. So thanks to everyone for being here, for their efficiency. Thanks to the public for, you know, being here tonight. I will We'll take a motion to adjourn. So moved. All second. Moved by Councillor McNevitt, seconded by Councillor Pelletier. Councillor McNevitt, how do you vote? Yes. Councillor Pelletier? Yes. And I am a yes. So go ahead and let the record show that the Health and Human Services and Public Safety Committee adjourned at 6.19 p.m. Have a good evening, everybody. And remember, sustainability and transportation tomorrow night. Have a good night.