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ARDEN HILLS CITY COUNCIL WORK SESSION — OCTOBER 13, 2025 3 Councilmember Monson thinks the graph is misleading. She said two would be fully staffed but they prefer there to be three. So those positions aren't completely unstaffed. She wouldn't want residents to think that half of the time the fire department doesn't have anyone there. Assistant Chief Rausch said that is not what the chart is signifying. If there were six positions open on a day, this shows how often all six positions are filled. Their goal is to have all of those positions filled. They aren't meeting the goal of the posted/budgeted positions for that day being completely full. This is showing a vacancy of some sort in the schedule. Assistant Chief Rausch said the data has been broken down by station. The three positions posted and budgeted for shifts at Station 120, are filled 77.5% percent of the time. Meaning 22.5% of the time all of those positions are not filled. Station 130 has time periods where three positions are included in the budget and some of the daytime hours there are two scheduled positions. The percentage of positions that are budgeted and built in to the schedule are not being filled completely is consistent across Station 120, Station 130 and Station 140. Assistant Chief Rausch said the final handout shows the percentage of time that Station 130 is browned out or closed. Some of this is seasonal. The brown outs increase in summer and during the winter months when people have extra time to pick up shifts, that decreases. Councilmember Holden said this doesn't mean that calls aren't being responded to, it means they are responding from a different station. Assistant Chief Rausch confirmed. Chief Boehlke said the first part of the strategic plan is hiring three full-time firefighters in 2026 to fill the shift vacancies and add stability to the staffing numbers. We are looking at our needs today. If money were no issue they would be saying they need twelve full-time firefighters. Once they attain twelve additional full-time firefighters they would become very stable. They wouldn't be relying on the part-time firefighters to fill the spots. They are aware of the costs for each of the positions. Most of the firefighters are taxpayers in these cities. We're in a different world. They just wrapped up their part-time fall hiring process. There were eight individuals they would have liked to hire, they are down to five. The pool of candidates is not the same. The individuals who are hired, often don't have any training or experience. They will spend the first year completing fire and EMS training. That will establish the bare basics of their knowledge base. The following couple years will be focused on running the equipment and driving the trucks. They don't get use of the new part-time people until year two and year three. The first year and into the second they are working in a probationary status. They are an additional person on those shifts as they learn. Chief Boehlke said they have good trucks and equipment. They are in the process of building a new headquarters station with great training opportunities. The trucks don't save people or property. The fire department is the firefighters. They are all necessary parts and pieces. He wants to reinforce that they have been working through the fire board and have been talking to the cities that this day was coming. They understand the cost. It has nothing to do with the quality of the part-time people. Their part-time people just can't give any more. They will continue to try to hire some of them but they aren't the solution. There is a lot of competition for new full-time firefighter jobs that weren't there before. A lot of times the firefighters get their training and experience with LJFD and then they move on to a full-time opportunity. He expects next year there will be a pension increase for the part-time relief association. They will lose some people to