The Otsego Placebo
The Otsego Placebo
The plan to create our own municipal fire department and build a station in the middle of our city has brought with it a lot of frustration and confusion. Over the past month, I have had many calls from residents, and I spoke with quite a few at Prairie Festival that couldn't understand how the plan has gotten this far. I also see questions from residents online that are confused about why anyone would be against a fire station.
The issue is being misconstrued, purposely. The question is two-fold: do we need a fire station, and/or do we need our own municipal fire department? The answer to both of these is no, but they are often conflated by those who should know better in order to give the false impression that there are no other options, and that the two questions are linked in some fashion.
I will go into detail on both of these questions in order to clear up some of the confusion. The question of whether we need a fire station or not was addressed by the Fire Study. It stated that we may need a station at some point in the future if the response times warranted it. The reasoning behind this is because there is a small gap in the center of the city where the contract providers have response times longer than 9 minutes. Putting a station there to supplement those contract providers would close that gap. The decision to build that substation for Albertville to operate and manage was expected to start in 2030 - assuming that Elk River and Rogers didn't build new stations... which they both did. So the question becomes very easy to answer: we don't need a station because the contracts work well for us, and the metrics do not support building one at this time. In the future, when we may need one, there are a whole host of options on how it could be built that are less expensive and much more effective than the current plan calls for.
The next question is even easier to answer: do we need our own municipal fire department? No. The statewide trend - and indeed, the national trend - is for fire departments to consolidate their services to combine resources and reduce costs. Owning a fire department is incredibly expensive, and cities have had to turn to contracting, fire districts, and service agreements to share costs and resources. Creating our own fire department is moving in the opposite direction - it's dividing resources at a time when we can least afford it. We are going from 7 fire stations down to 1.
And therein lies the problem: the falsehood that we need our own fire department has created this ridiculous promise that we are going to end the contracts. For some reason, having our own department has meant that the contracts need to end as well. When you think about it: that makes no sense. If this were truly about safety and not image, then we would be following the recommendations of the Fire Study: keep the contracts, build a substation.
Abandoning the contracts and building a station in a less populated area is not only counter-productive for improving response times, it's also going to make recruiting difficult. We have less households to recruit from if the department is going to stay with the standard of having firefighters live within 5 minutes of the station. The common response to this is that we'll be able to supplement our service with mutual-aid from surrounding cities...
Albertville says "no thank you"
Except it’s not true that we can use mutual-aid to supplement our service. We know it's not true. The other cities have told us that it's not true, and yet it gets repeated. During the previous City Council meeting I raised this issue of mutual-aid and was told that other cities are going to be providing mutual-aid. A recent news article also referenced that mutual-aid will still be available.
Star News: Otsego seeks bids for its own fire station
I have been skeptical of this claim since the beginning, and my suspicions were confirmed when I spoke with the other cities three months ago. The idea that we will be able to get service for free in the future after we cancel the contracts is false. It's another promise that doesn't pass the sniff test, and I'm increasingly worried that commitments are being made that will only be proven false long after the money is spent. As I pointed out in my last newsletter, that is precisely what is happening in the City of Orono, and it's as if the same playbook is being used against the residents of Otsego.
On Monday, the Albertville City Council decided they needed to set the record straight. That council had a long and sobering discussion about the uncomfortable position that the City of Otsego was putting them in. With Otsego claiming that mutual-aid was going to continue after the contracts were terminated, the Albertville Fire Chief expressed concern that Otsego residents would be under the false impression that Albertville would continue to be their provider. In turn, the Council wondered how Otsego residents could be properly notified that this was not true - because they are worried about the reputation of their own fire department, and rightfully so. When residents on the west side of Otsego have longer response times because the contracts were terminated, will Otsego take the time to let those residents know that it wasn't Albertville that failed them?
That is a reasonable concern for the Albertville Council to have. There are businesses and residents that live mere blocks away from the Albertville station - and they are going to have to wait for an Otsego fire truck in the future. The Albertville Chief pointed out that would likely put his department in the position of having to respond to many of these incidents - especially if the Otsego duty crew is busy. And since the Albertville station is closer, that would mean that the residents of Albertville would be subsidizing our service.
The Albertville Council decided that mutual-aid is not an option, and that they are going to have to make that clear. They will be sending a letter to Otsego to ensure their position is understood, and they will also be sending a new contract prior to the end of the year in order to make sure the service they provide is consistent. They expect that the contract will need to continue in some fashion, because they need to be able to recover their costs for providing service in Otsego.
Afterwards, I spoke with several council members and staff, and they reiterated to me that they understand why a city of 23,000+ people would want to start a fire department. They want to make sure the transition is smooth for us. I let them know I don't think it is a transition. We aren't taking the approach of bringing a station online to supplement our existing services. We aren't looking at how this could be done a step at a time. Instead, we're flipping a switch and hoping for the best. It makes no sense.
Gold Plating
It makes no sense - but it is easy to understand... If we rewind the clock a year and remember what the decision to build a $34MM city hall campus looked like: it's the exact same mistake. And, it's helpful to remember that the decisions to start our own municipal fire department, build a station in the middle of the city, and cancel the contracts were all made before the Council changed direction on the city hall campus project. That project had ballooned out of control because of a failure in decision-making called gold plating.
Gold plating is the scope creep that occurs when an expensive project is on the line and more and more features and niceties are added along the way because it's easy to tack on more things when cost is no object. This is especially true when the projects are political in nature, and have a Council that all wants to put their stamp on it. It's not until the very end - when the price tag shows up - that reality hits you square in the face and all those little features that were added become a significant cost. In many cases, there's sunken costs at that point and an escalation of commitment that make it difficult for most people to change their mind.
This is exactly what happened with the city campus project - what started out as a single problem that needed to be fixed (vehicle storage) quickly ballooned into a full city campus. At no point were the brakes applied. We went from "we need a place to store some vehicles" to "wouldn't it be nice to have a new council chambers!" in the matter of a couple months.
In the private market, this phenomenon is well understood, and there are several ways of addressing this kind of scope creep. Projects need to have stated objectives, costs need to be determined up front, and additions in scope need to be approved by stakeholders. In the public sector - those protections don't exist. We just spend more tax dollars because we can. We get distracted by shiny things.
The decision to create our own fire department, abandon the contracts, and build a brand new state-of-the-art fire station follow the same flawed thinking that brought us a bloated city hall campus project: the brakes are never applied, and there are no protections against gold plating - because the only protection that exists is the fact that we have representative government. Those same representatives defer their thinking to others, make promises they can't keep, and then get to put their name on a plaque in that new fire station.
It has to stop. We need to follow the Fire Study, decide what problem it is we are trying to solve, prioritize the solutions, and figure out how these things are going to be paid for.
Defining the Problem
One of the reasons the city campus project got so out of control is that the problem that needed to be solved shifted from equipment storage to perceived construction efficiencies. As long as we're hiring a designer, let's also have them design a new building. And as long as they're doing that, let's also have them expand public works. And as long as they're doing that, let's also have them redesign the parks building. The original problem gets lost.
When it comes to the fire department, the original problem was that our emergency management was being done by Wright County. Why that's specifically a problem is still not quite clear. The consultant hired in 2021 also noted that the Council was concerned about response time, contract cost increases, and ambulance services. It was ultimately decided by the prior council that the best way to address those concerns was not to get more information, but to create a municipal fire department. Why were response times a concern? No clue. How do we solve the ambulance response times? We can't - a city has no control over that. Perhaps the biggest factor in the shift in focus was the claim that the city would be able to have it's own fire department for cheaper than the contracts. Although no study was done to substantiate this claim, it was taken as fact and it allowed the Council to push on. For some reason it wasn't obvious to the prior council - but it should be painfully obvious, now: there's no way we can have our own municipal fire department for less than the cost of the contracts. It's going to cost us three times as much.
That narrows it down to one problem we are trying to solve for: response time. Again, it's not clear why this is a concern since the Fire Study pointed out that all three of the contract agencies are responding within national guidelines, but let's pretend for a moment that it is a legitimate concern. Did we do an analysis of response times before deciding to solve for response times by creating our own municipal fire department? No. Of course not.
Using data from the National Fire Incident Reporting System (NFIRS), I am able to get an idea of what Otsego residents are experiencing for their fire services. In 2023, there were 10 structure fires. Of those 10, the longest response time was 15 minutes - and that was for a Rogers Fire Department response. It's worth noting that during the 2023 year, the Rogers Fire Department was reporting the 911 call time as their "alarm" time - meaning the actual response time is less than 15 minutes for this call. The average for these 10 calls is 9.5 minutes.
In total, Otsego had 427 incidents, including 179 EMS calls, 29 vehicle accidents, and 90 calls that were canceled en route. NFIRS data does not have any indicator of what calls were emergency, so I don't know how many calls had "lights and sirens." However, if I look at all fires and most of the medical calls (excluding non-injury accidents, etc), the average response time is 10.3 minutes.
So what problem are we trying to solve? And whatever the problem is - why is the solution to abandon the contracts and put a station in the middle of our city? Remember, the Fire Study stated that option resulted in the poorest performance of all the scenarios they examined. Not only are we trying to solve a problem that doesn't exist - we're doing it in the most expensive way possible.
There is no city in the State of Minnesota that has a duty crew for 427 incidents per year. That is absolutely unheard of. Our staffing costs are going to exceed that of Elk River. The city with a staffing model that closely matches what Otsego is planning is the City of Faribault. They have a duty crew of 2-3 full time firefighters, for a total of 10 full time and 23 paid-on-call. Costs there are more than twice what we currently pay for contracted service. However, the Faribault Fire Department had 2,942 calls for service last year. Most cities don't even have full time staff until they have around 600 calls per service per year, and duty crews are almost unheard of until there's around 1,000 calls per year.
Think about what that means for cost: our peak hour is 4pm for calls for service. During the 4pm hour, we had 30 calls for service in 2023. That's all year. If we pay 3-4 people to sit at a station for that peak hour 7 days a week, they will be doing absolutely nothing 92% of the time. It's difficult to express how much of a waste of taxpayer resources that is - and that is just during our peak hour. If we were being honest, we would be telling residents that 427 calls per year is something that a volunteer department could handle.
Placebo
Given the fact that we are trying to solve a problem that doesn't exist, with a solution that is far more involved than it needs to be, perhaps the actual problem is something that is unsaid. Perhaps the real reason that Otsego is abandoning the contracts, creating it's own municipal fire department, and building an expensive state-of-the-art fire station is much more simple: identity. We want our own trucks. We want our own station. Doesn't matter how much it costs. Doesn't matter if it's actually making residents safer. All that matters is that our logo is on the side.
I've visited a lot of fire stations and spoken with quite a few firefighters over the past 3 years. Yet there's something I only noticed recently. Look at the logos on the side of the trucks in Monticello, or Albertville, or Elk River, or Rogers... or most other cities. You will probably see symbols of the profession: a fire hose, ladder, axe, hydrant, or a Halligan bar.
The logo for the Otsego Fire Department is just the city logo. Because that's what was important. That's the problem we were trying to solve.
This week
Public Safety Commission
On Tuesday, the Public Safety Commission met for a special meeting at the Wright County Government Center. This meeting was an opportunity for the Public Safety Commission to tour the Sheriff's offices, jail facility, and dispatch center. Sheriff Deringer took time out of his evening - almost 3 hours - to guide us on a tour of the facility.
Commissioners were able to see the jail facility from intake to cells. We saw the special housing unit where more... difficult... prisoners are kept. There's also the general population pods where inmates spend most of their day in a common area. Currently, the Wright County jail is housing roughly 100 inmates from other counties - with most of those being from Hennepin County. Other facilities are understaffed and so have to find a place to house their inmates. The other counties will contract with Wright County for a fee in order to hold their overflow. With those inmates comes additional challenges to ensure that people from different gangs aren't housed in the same units.
Wright County has inmates who are awaiting trial as well as convicts who are serving less than one year. During their time in jail, the contact they will have with family and loved ones is through a video screen that is closely monitored. A sign that hangs next to the entrance of the video visitation room caused some confusion. It said something along the lines of dresses and shirts need to have covers - and the Sheriff had to clarify that people sometimes try to use the video conferences for... inappropriate conversations.
We also spent some time going through the vehicles and mobile command units that the Sheriff has. He was proud of the fact that he has been able to secure most of the equipment through grants or donations and so the "toys in the toy box" didn't cost the Wright County taxpayers much, if anything.
Finally, we saw the actual offices for the Sheriff, investigators, and other staff. There was also a tour of the dispatch center. We got a quick glimpse of the screens and tools available to the dispatchers before a non-emergency call came in and the group left as to not be a distraction. I was surprised to learn that the dispatchers will operate out of a backup site once per week in order to ensure that the alternate site functions properly in the event of an outage or severe weather event.
It was a very informative tour. I had taken a tour of the jail as part of the Wright County Sheriff's Office Open House, but was only able to see the general population area during that previous tour. There's a whole maze of other cell blocks apart from that, and facilities like laundry and kitchen and activities areas that I was able to see this time and I was surprised at how big the whole facility actually is.
Next Week
Special City Council Meeting
The City Council will meet on Monday at 5:30pm for a special meeting at Prairie Center. This meeting has two items on the agenda: a closed session to develop an offer for the purchase of real property, and a discussion of the remaining 2025 budget and property tax levy items.
City Council Meeting
The City Council will also meet on Monday at 7pm at Prairie Center for its regular meeting. This meeting has several items on the main agenda:
Consent Agenda:
Approve Claims List.
Approve Prior City Council Meeting Minutes:
Approve City Council Special Compensation for September 2024.
Adopt Resolution 2024-71 Approving the Assessment Roll for Delinquent Utility Bills.
Approve an Agreement for Preconstruction Services – Cold Storage Facility.
Adopt Resolution 2024-72 Accepting Public Improvements – Due North.
Adopt Resolution 2024-73 Accepting Donations for Sponsorship of the Prairie Festival.
Approve Pay Application #26 for the West WWTF Improvements Phase 1 Project.
Approve Pay Application #1 and Change Order #1 for the 2024 Street Renewal Project.
Approve Pay Application #1 for the 2024 Street Maintenance Project.
Adopt Resolution 2024-74 Ordering Preparation of Plans and Specifications – Parrish Avenue Trail.
Adopt Resolution 2024-75 Ordering Preparation of Plans and Specifications – 80th Street Trail.
Anna’s Acres – 2nd Addition: Final Plat and Development Contract
Assessment for 2024 Street Renewal Project: Public Hearing and Consider Resolution Adopting Assessments
Proposed Assessment Roll – Unpaid Special Charges: Public Hearing and Consider Resolution Adopting Assessment Roll for Unpaid Special Charges
Otsego Waterfront District: Consider Request for Reconsideration of Zoning and Subdivision Application
Parks and Recreation Commission Meeting
The Parks and Recreation Commission will meet on Tuesday at 7pm at Prairie Center. There are two items on the main agenda: a review of the 2025 Capital Improvement Plan for the Parks Department, as well as an update to the electric bicycle ordinance.