00:00:03,120	S1:
City. Current. Produced by Dakota media access. In-depth discussion with Bismarck and Mandan city officials. Watch on government access channel 602 HD or tune in to radio Access 102.5 FM. Always local, always current.

00:00:25,679	S2:
And welcome to this March 18th edition of City Current. Recapping last night's Mandan City Commission meeting, but with a special guest today. Mandan Fire Chief Mitch Bits. We'll hear from him shortly. Big topic. Last night, the commission was considering a resolution to submit proposed sales tax use tax to a June 2026 ballot that was passed, and we'll get into the details of that. And then Chief Bits will give us Fire station three presentation. What could be on the horizon if the June 2026 ballot is passed. And there's the language for what the commission passed last night, they approved the ballot measure to consider future use of existing city sales tax for fire department facilities. So a vote will take place June 9th, and there will be a lot of education done between now and then to get residents up to speed on what's happening. Thanks for joining us this morning. I'm Tom Gerhardt from Dakota media access. And as promised to Mandan Fire Chief Mitch Bits. Thanks for filling in for Jim today, and great to have you in. Super timely considering what happened last night. Yeah. Good morning, Tom, and thank you for having us. We're excited to be here as well and do what we can to fill in for Jim. So that's that's not a tall order, right? Yeah. He's on the road with some business, so he is on the road of some business. We did. I did see last night. He had those very nice, uh, suspenders on for Saint Patrick's Day. So he did get some camera time last night? Yes. And he offered for those to be lent to me, and I asked. He passed on that I he can pull him off. I don't know, I think we'll leave. We'll leave that to Jim. Right. Well, let's let's get right into your presentation last night. We. I didn't want to bury the lead, so I did want people to know right off the bat that the commission did unanimously pass the ballot measure language. But that was the primary. That was what was on the agenda last night. But I thought it was really interesting and important information that you passed along the education aspect as to why are we looking at a third fire station? Uh, where will the money come from? Where will this fire station potentially be? What might it look like? We've got all those answers. So we'll go through your presentation, which you titled future of the Mandan Fire Department.

00:02:49,949	S3:
Yeah, that's an excellent point, that the formal business last night was to approve the resolution. But really, we wanted to take the opportunity to educate the city Commission and the general public at where we sit as a man and fire department, where we see ourselves going in the long term success of the department.

00:03:06,699	S2:
And we'll we'll tee up what you're talking about, uh, through various ways. But you really started off letting people know that the decisions you make are all based on your mission, vision and values. And sometimes that can be kind of fancy talk, but I thought it was really a foundational statement setting up what you were going to talk about.

00:03:26,740	S3:
Yeah. Um, so to your point, Tom, we, you know, our mission, our vision, our values are not taken for granted at the fire department. Um, everything we do is is tracked. I mean, everything from how much time we spend washing a truck to training to where our calls are, where, um, what kind of tools we're using on those calls. Uh, so we, we try and take those values extremely serious, and we're not just throwing a dart at a map and saying, this looks like a good spot to spend some money. Um, they're very, uh, educated and data driven decisions that we try and stand by. Day in and day out at the fire department.

00:03:57,060	S2:
Well, some of those numbers you're talking about include the growth that we've seen in Mandan. You had this graph. If you're watching, you can see this. If not, we'll say that in 2015, Mandan population was a little over 21,000 or so. And now here, fast forward to 2025 and we're up to 25,000. So the city is growing and it's projected to grow even more.

00:04:20,579	S3:
Right. Yeah. The growth chart. You can clearly see again, if people are able to see on TV it's upward trend. And we don't see that changing anytime soon. Our economy as a as a state, as a local Bismarck Mandan economy remains strong. And we're grateful for that. But with that growth and strength comes some challenges, some opportunities to fix, some some spots. We need to adjust a little bit as a department.

00:04:43,699	S2:
So and you mentioned the former city planner estimated that population be around 36,000 by 2050. So just again continued growth and continued upward trends in Mandan.

00:04:55,730	S3:
Yeah, absolutely. And we're excited about that growth. And we think that that northwest part of town is where a majority of that growth is going to occur.

00:05:03,170	S2:
Well, of course, with more people you have increased call volume. And that's another thing that we can point to. This is a look at the last ten years of call volume. And it looks like about 1700 calls in 2015. And fast forward to 2025 and and hundreds more.

00:05:19,970	S3:
Right. Yeah. They call. I mean, as you mentioned, there's people, more people, there's more problems, there's more issues. And it's a lot of people think the fire Department of Fire structure fires. Well, it goes much further beyond that. It can be car accidents. It could be a brush fire or a structure fire or a medical emergency, a cardiac arrest, or somebody cut their hand on the lawnmower or something like that. So the more people you have, the more activity in your community, the more propensity there is for emergencies to occur. So yeah, that number continues to increase. Um, we are always evaluating, uh, the calls we do. And do not go on. We go on the majority of EMS calls, but we're starting to be very strategic. On if there's an opportunity to change our response model to to curb those numbers. But even by doing that, we're still seeing an increase in calls.

00:06:08,730	S2:
And for those who don't know, right now in the city of Mandan, there are two fire stations, the fire station, one which is on Collins Avenue. You told me we were talking a little bit off air that was remodeled 20 some years ago. It's it's in great shape, a great place to be where your your office is. And then, of course, Fire Station two came online in 2009, in the Lakewood area. But so you have two stations serving the entire community.

00:06:36,129	S3:
Yeah. So as you mentioned, our downtown fire station one has one engine company staffed with a minimum of three firefighters. And then myself and our battalion chief operate our administrative offices out of there. Um, you know, it's interesting that that particular building, fire station one, has served our community since the early, early 1900s or late 1800s. I'm not exactly sure, but it has served time. Yeah. And, uh, it's it's it's kind of cool. It's got some good history there. It served as city hall, police station, public works, the fire station. I think there was a jail.

00:07:07,600	S2:
You said that last night. You said you got a nod.

00:07:09,680	S3:
Some head nods from, uh, former police.

00:07:11,560	S2:
Chief.

Jail. 00:07:12,399	S3:
Yeah, it was a jail there. So, um, but I guess it kind of speaks to the, um, the need to build a building and build it. Right. And as a city, we want to do it right. We're not going anywhere. We're going to plan to build this, going to be here for probably 50 or 100 years. Um, and that building has proved true. It's been a central hub for the downtown area.

00:07:31,439	S2:
We'll circle back to, uh, Fire Station one and a few slides, uh, because an emergency operations center is also, uh, going along potentially with this new if the ballot language passes. But what we can talk about that Uh, shortly. Let's look at the fire station coverage today, because this is really a key issue, right? As you know, that's why we wanted to talk about the population growth of Mandan. The increase in calls. Because again, right now the two shaded circles indicate your coverage areas. And then of course, you mentioned that northwest part of town, which is growing. Explain what we're seeing here and why you would like to increase the coverage with that third station.

00:08:16,949	S3:
Yeah. So a great question. The as a department, we try and get to 90% of our calls within four minutes or less is what we're shooting for. Um, we realize that you can't build your church for Easter Sunday. You're never going to get it 100% of the time. But that should be our goal. That is the industry standard. NFPA, the National Fire Protection Association says that that should be our goal. So we hit that four minute mark pretty consistently in our downtown station response area, our Lakewood Station two area. We can cover that response number fairly fairly well. Most of the time there's a little bit of gap in the southwest part of town, down by titles a little bit south of Fort Lincoln Elementary. But as you mentioned, if you look at the graphic on the screen for those able to see the northwest part of Mandan, where that in red circle is, is almost entirely underserved by our our downtown station. So we're currently covering that with station one located on Collins and first Street in downtown Mandan. So that's quite a travel distance up there to the northwest part of town.

00:09:20,710	S2:
And you also talked last night about what if, you know, Station One's on another call, then we'll get to that. Yeah. Here too. So let's talk about response time. This would be from station one to Red Trail Elementary. You had a graphic. Let's just use that as an example. And again if you can see you've got the response time as 11 minutes approximately.

00:09:43,299	S3:
Yeah. So as you mentioned, Red Trail Elementary, just as an example from our downtown station, if we're sitting in the truck with it running, that's an 11 minute travel time. Now the thing we need to remember is that when someone calls 901, there's a little bit of time that needs to be allowed for processing through dispatch and dispatch to get a notification out to the firefighters and then our personnel to to get on the truck. If it's a medical call, we expect them out of the station in 60s. If it's a fire call where they have to put on their structure gear, we allow them 90s to turn on time. So you need to add a few minutes of response time to to initiate the drive time. So that could be quite a long time in the event of a fire or a medical emergency or a car accident or something like that.

00:10:25,860	S2:
And I was fascinated by that last night, I guess. I'm sure I've heard it before, but 60s and 90s to gear gear up for. That's amazing. That's an incredible response time. So the example you gave last night, what happens if Station one is one's already on a call. We just mentioned that now we're looking at Red trail from station two, and even though it's much further away, you're still thinking you can get there again. 13 minutes with the truck running, uh, the crew inside. But, uh, obviously at least a couple of minutes are added to that response.

00:10:59,340	S3:
Yeah. Just the just for the call processing and everything to get in motion once somebody actually dials 911. And in that, you also have to remember that the person may not dial 901 or the fire might not be reported immediately either. So, um, things can really escalate quickly. And that's why it's so important that we try and do what we can to address the issue that we see in front of us here.

00:11:20,539	S2:
And then you mentioned or you've mentioned in the past to the station two is where you have the water rescue. So again, those guys take off or something in Northwest Mandan. You kind of leave that part of town, I don't want to say unattended, but in a sense, I mean, it's just something that people have to keep in mind that, um, you know, you can't be everywhere all the time, right?

00:11:41,370	S3:
Yeah. And that's that's an excellent point. We we like I said earlier, we know we can't cover 100% of our city, uh, with under four minute response times every single time. But we need to do better than what we're doing right now. And we see this as an opportunity to a reasonable and responsible opportunity to help mitigate that. So we are have our resources more evenly spread out throughout the city, so we're able to maintain more consistent coverage.

00:12:07,330	S2:
And ultimately, I mean, what you're trying to do is serve the residents of Mandan.

00:12:11,570	S3:
Correct? Absolutely. Hands on. That's that is 100% why we come to work every day to do that.

00:12:16,250	S2:
So let's talk about, you know, you got a slide. Does the response time really matter. And and uh, of course it does. What I thought was really interesting about what you said at the commission meeting was just modern materials used in building and how different it is for those materials, how they burn compared to maybe older fires. You use the example in our conference room that, you know, 50, 60, 70 years ago, all the chairs and there would be solid oak. They're going to burn very differently than the than the things we have in there now.

00:12:48,399	S3:
It's a, you know, it's a fire has been around for many, many years and it hasn't changed, but it has changed. What's burning is changing. And there's so much technology advanced or research advancement that's occurred in the last, let's say, 5 to 10 years. Um, as you mentioned, the the materials inside of our rooms, inside of our houses, almost all of them are like a petrochemical based. So when they do burn, they burn very hot, very fast, and they're extremely toxic. They are not burning, uh, real traditional wood like it was 50 years ago. So the fire dynamics have changed quite dramatically. And, uh, that leads to, you know, that faster, hotter fire compresses your time frame, uh, for occupants to escape and then lighter weight construction. Well, it's very very. It's built with modern safety codes. It's the material going into these lighter weight construction houses because they're cheaper and faster built. And that's just everything nowadays. It's not a it's not a knock on modern construction. It's just the way it is. Um, but, you know, uh, they're not as, um, fire. They can't take such a fire load. Like like the old house is good. So, yeah, things are changing for sure. Fires as a whole are probably flatlined or slightly decreasing because, again, modern safety standards. But when they do occur, they're much more dangerous and violent than what they used to be.

00:14:09,799	S2:
And you said that response time needs to be quicker. You had a, uh, a graphic last night that said a small fire can turn into a fully involved room or structure in 5 to 10 minutes, fires double in size and every single minute. And then the other side we haven't talked about is, you know, you have a cardiac event or something like that. I mean, it's imperative that you get on scene as quickly as possible.

00:14:33,399	S3:
Yeah. So as I mentioned earlier, you know, the fire calls are steady to slightly decreasing. But EMS calls emergency medical calls continue to increase year over year. And that can be anything from a person choking to a cardiac cardiac arrest or a traumatic injury. If you get your hand cut on something, um, you know, brain damage, um, can occur in less than four minutes. Or, you know, once you get past that four minute mark. Brain damage can occur if it's a traumatic bleed. Um, you know, there's you only have minutes to work with there. So every second counts in our operation, and and we don't we don't control where that emergency occurs. We only control where our resources are when that emergency occurs. So we have to strategically place our resources throughout the community to, to try and be ready for when it does happen.

00:15:19,350	S2:
Well, I think that really sets the table well. And this is where you bring in the solution. And we've mentioned it. We've talked about the ballot language being approved for June, but a third fire station for Mandan and uh, again to reduce those wait times, the response times and this graphic and you can tell us physically, but points out where the proposed fire station three would be located.

00:15:44,870	S3:
Yeah. So the graphic on the screen is located. The proposed fire station would be like 3600 old red trails. What we're looking at there, the city currently owns that parcel, which has a water tower nearby. There's a couple of parcels or the city owns. We feel that that'll be well situated to cover our needs of today and likely the needs of tomorrow, as that growth continues north and west of the mid and middle school, out through the far north west parts of Mandan. This station, if we build it and staff it, we feel like the road connectivity will serve us well into the future to cover that area.

00:16:21,110	S2:
And as you indicate on here, there are not only houses, but there's industrial, there's commercial areas on top of that residential. So this would serve a lot of areas. And if people aren't familiar with 3600 old Red trail, roughly, you did point out this is not too far northwest of the Walmart in Mandan, north of I-94.

00:16:43,700	S3:
Yeah, it's kind of got a mixture of residential, commercial, you know, red rural elementary. So it's got the gamut up there.

Absolutely. 00:16:50,980	S2:
So let's go over the price tag, as you say, a public safety investment plan. Well, let's break down the dollars a little bit. And then we did want to we'll make sure we get this out and you can say it. But no new tax dollars would be used to pay for this fire station. Three but let's walk through what you're looking at here with with the proposal.

00:17:12,980	S3:
Yeah. So, you know, the fire station itself, we're looking at anywhere from probably about that $9 million mark. Now, that's not just a fire station. That would include, um, a possible emergency operations center or an EOC. There's a little bit of talk about that last night. The city commission meeting currently. Um, if there is an event in Mandan, we would stand up what's called an EOC Emergency Operations Center. That really is a room or a facility that we can co-locate multiple emergency response agencies, other city offices to either prepare for, monitor or respond to an event. Um, and we we have a really good working relationship with our partners at Morton County, and we are able to use our emergency operations center, whether that be at the law enforcement center or in the basement of the Morton County Courthouse. However, there there there's a need. As our communities continue to grow in, these events become larger and larger. And, um, we need more and more space for those kind of operations. And then also we stepped back and looked at it and we thought, well, our current facility that we're in is located in the floodplain, and we have good protection from the Missouri River as well as the Hart River with the Hart River levee system and the in the Garrison Dam, but we. I think we have a responsibility to look out into the future and say what could go wrong and how can we mitigate that cost if we're going to be spending a couple of million dollars for a fire station? I think it makes sense to build a building that can serve us well into the future. And that's not in the floodplain. Uh, so I don't know if that answered your question.

00:18:48,730	S2:
Yeah. No, that's. And then we just had it up. Maybe we can put it up one more, uh, a couple more seconds. But this visual shows where the floodplain would be. And as you can see, it, uh, it cuts quite a swath. So you want to get out of that low ground if possible, get that to high ground for future emergency operations.

00:19:07,769	S3:
Yeah. You don't know when that when that night is going to come. Right. When all of a sudden something doesn't go like we thought it was going to go. And so as a city, we don't have a fallback up on the high ground that's not in the floodplain. Our public works, our police station, our fire station, our city hall, our library. Um, yeah. Most of our facilities, if not all of them, are in the floodplain. Uh, and we have, like I said, we have a good working relationship with Morton County to get some facilities that are not in the floodplain. Um, but we feel like it'd be responsible time for us to probably, uh, take a more, uh, intentional stance on having a facility up on the high ground.

00:19:45,400	S2:
Well, let's talk about how this will be paid for if it's passed. And, uh, I'll let you take it from there. But again, this wouldn't be a new tax, but I'm sure the taxpayers, the residents want to know how this will be funded if it's passed in June.

00:19:59,720	S3:
Yeah. Um, we don't take that lightly. We understand we're talking about millions of dollars here, and that that is not a small, uh, item to to stomach for a taxpayer. So the question is, is will my taxes go up? Right? I mean, that's and the answer to that is no. Um, we, uh, expect the star and sports complex, which is being paid for with a three quarter cent sales tax. Right now, we expect that to be paid for in late 2027 2028. About 14 years ahead of schedule. Yeah, it's great news. I think it speaks volumes to our community and our our the strength of our economy here. So our suggestion, our request to the June 9th ballot is would we would would we have the voter support to extend that sales tax or reallocate that sales tax? It would not be increasing it. It would be once the star and Sports complex tax is expired or paid off, however, we want to word that we would reallocate that money to help fund the long term improvements of the man and fire department response model.

00:20:57,799	S2:
So basically, like a handing off a baton and a track and field or something, you get one project done. Uh, that is incredible. Paying something off 14 years early and then being able to continue that for another need of the community.

00:21:12,880	S3:
Right. And we want to be fully transparent. I mean, we that's one thing that we pride ourselves on as a department and as our, as a city and as a general, as a city in general, we pride ourselves on transparency. So we're trying to say what we want to do, and we will do what we say we're going to do.

00:21:27,349	S2:
So, so June 9th, we have voters will go to the polls. What would be the timeline then? You spelled that out last night to, uh, after June, if this passes, take us from there.

00:21:41,509	S3:
Yeah. So if we get a successful vote in June, we would continue through the design process. Probably great break ground in 2027. And then, uh, with the hopes of opening up that station in that 28, 20, 28, um, early 2029 timeframe. And we also put a on the screen, you'll see there's a couple improvements mentioned for station one and station two. Again, as we mentioned earlier, those facilities are, you know, they're aging as we speak. And we just want to make sure that we're being responsible long term, making sure we're making if there's any leaky roofs or leaky windows or something that we're addressing those things. So they so we can have those buildings around for many, many years to come.

00:22:17,630	S2:
And one thing I, I think maybe you want to mention too, is in that those dollars you have the idea of maybe buying some land for future use because we, as we showed at the beginning, by 2050, the population will, you know, just continue to grow.

00:22:31,269	S3:
Right. Yeah. Excellent point. So there's no plans for station four right now. But at some point, you know, if you if a guy looks back at the slides, you'll notice that there is a gap down in the southwest part of town. Um, we feel comfortable today that we can handle those calls with either station one or station two. But to your point, at some point down the road there is going to be a need for station four. So it only makes sense if that's true. Um, we need to keep our eyes out for the right piece of land today, because it's not going to get any cheaper in the future. You know.

00:23:02,109	S2:
We know.

00:23:02,789	S3:
Right? So yeah, that's the intention there. If the if we find the right piece of land for that, we want to be able to have a funding source established so we can secure that now at today's dollar.

00:23:12,269	S2:
Well, we got the rendering of, uh, proposed fire station three. What? It could look like. You showed that last night. We thought we'd show that. That's a peak that, uh, you have and, uh, looks great.

00:23:24,900	S3:
Yeah, we're excited about it. Um, this particular rendering on the screen, which show three bay concepts, we'd have an engine company and then a brush truck stationed out of there and living quarters for those firefighters. Um, with the thought of for firefighters is what we build it for. Um, to live there 24 over seven, and then this would be a semi hardened facility. Um, so what that means is, is that if a tornado would come or a strong windstorm or something, this thing's not going to tip over. The windows might break or something like that, but the the walls aren't going to tip over. Our firefighters are going to survive. Our trucks are going to survive. Our doors are going to open, and we're going to be able to respond to an emergency if that happens. Uh, and then and again, this one would have an emergency operations center built in it. So, um, a large meeting space for setting up a, like, a unified command with some offices for some breakout rooms. If there needs to be like a planning section or a logistics section or something like that in a in a large scale event. So yeah, we feel we're on a good track with this facility. Um, it's we plan to be here a long, long down the road, so we don't want to sell ourselves short.

00:24:37,250	S2:
Right. Well, in your first public engagement session is April 13th at Red trail from 6 to 730. I know you plan several of these. You also mentioned you wanted to say, just to make sure people know if if any groups need a speaker, uh, want, uh, Mandan Fire Department, you or Shane to come out and talk that you're happy to do that. Answer questions?

00:25:00,210	S3:
Yeah, absolutely. We, uh, we really do want to educate people and, um, give, provide facts and, and answer their questions that they may have because as I mentioned earlier, we're talking about, you know, 12 to $14 million. This isn't a chump change. So we want to make sure that if people have questions, they can ask us and we'll we'll provide them the facts so they can make decisions. And we love to tell our story because it's a it's it's the Citizens Fire Department. It's not my fire department. It's not our fire department. It is our fire department as a community. So we really want people to understand, uh, what it is that we're doing, and we want to understand what it is that we can do for them.

00:25:36,369	S2:
Right. And I think educating the voters, the citizens, that's I mean, let them make up their mind. But, um, again, I know what you're trying to do is, is, uh, serve the citizens of Mount Down as best as possible. So, Mitch, really appreciate all the information. And I know you can point people to to watch this. We'll have it available on demand for people to stream anytime they want. If, uh, this can be a resource, this show too. So I really appreciate you passing along all the info and filling in for Jim today.

00:26:06,569	S3:
Yeah, we're excited to be here. So thank you.

00:26:08,450	S2:
And, uh, lots of other things I just wanted to zip through for happenings in the city of Mandan. There are local elections coming up, but want you to know that, um, they're, uh, the first, uh, the deadline to get your name on a ballot is April 6th at 4 p.m., and there are two city commission spots available, three park board commissioners spots available, three school board members spots available, and then two Morton County commissioners. And you can find that info at City of mandan.com. There's an open public information open house March 18th. That's today from 4 to 7. So this is very timely to learn more about what's happening on Memorial Highway this year. And they're looking to get some feedback when it comes to communicating what is happening as this project continues in year two, in 2026, the city also wants uh, well, here's the website or for that. So if you wanted to give your feedback they would like you to take that survey. And that'll be open through March 31st. Matt Shenandoah, let us know that the countdown is on to July 4th. The Indian Independence Day celebration, which we know is fantastic in Mandan, and this year, special America's two 50th celebration. So that's coming up. Quit more quickly than it seems. It's a four month countdown. So, uh, although it is starting to feel a little bit like spring, but I don't know. Yesterday started out snowing and then got right. Yeah, yeah, I got really, really nice, um, multiple projects taking place in the city of Mandan. Just pop that website up. City of mandan.com. So if you want to find out is that time of year comes along. One last call. April 1st is the deadline to apply for your 2026 primary residence tax credit. So we wanted to let you know that and then Public Works in Mandan would like to let you know. Spring Cleanup Week is scheduled for April 20th through the 25th, and during that week, the city will provide residents with opportunities to get rid of the big, bulky items at no charge, along with some extended landfill hours. And so it's just a lot of things, a lot of things happening in the city of Mandan and city of Bismarck. And I think we're all excited to, although it hasn't been a harsh winter to get into spring and and on to summer.

00:28:38,549	S3:
Right?

00:28:38,829	S2:
Yeah. Well, Mitch, thanks again for joining us. If you want to look back and watch the entire city Commission meeting from Mandan from March 17th, you can download our apps. You just did that today. DMA is the DMA app.

00:28:52,710	S3:
I was very impressed, so I downloaded it already.

00:28:55,190	S2:
It's got it downloaded already. So you can take us on the go wherever you are. And also you can find these on Dakota media access. So appreciate you joining us again Mitch, and we'll see you next time on Sadiq Khan next time.

00:29:10,269	S1:
For more information on what was discussed in this episode of City Current, visit City of Mandan. Com or call (701) 667-3215.

00:29:20,269	S1:
If you have any suggestions, comments or issues you would like addressed in Future City Current episodes, contact us at info at free TV. Org. This program airs on Government Access channel two and 602 and or on Radio Access 102.5 FM. It's also available as a podcast on radio access and as a video viewing link at free TV. Thanks for tuning in to this edition of City Current.