Fire and police leadership urged the Flagstaff City Council on Friday to authorize staff to study new funding options to cover growing public-safety needs, citing rising call volumes, aging facilities and technological demands.

Fire Chief Mark Gaillard told council the department is managing increased emergency medical and wildland response demands and that the citys existing general-fund resources and typical revenue sources will not be enough to staff, equip and build the facilities the department needs. "The traditional revenues that you all are wrestling with... are insufficient to address what these future needs are," Gaillard said.

Gaillard organized the public-safety needs into three broad buckets: staffing, equipment and technology, and capital facilities. Staffing needs include additional daily firefighters and support staff; Gaillard noted that expansions in benefits (for example, parental leave) would increase pressure on 24-hour staffing operations. Equipment and technology needs include body-worn cameras, data aggregation and regional operations capabilities, updated station alerting systems and replacement apparatus. Capital projects discussed included a new Fire Station 7 location, a Wildfire Management station and replacements or upgrades to training facilities.

Police Chief Sean Conley said the department already has funding in the budget for a workload-assessment study that will evaluate duties, staffing models and opportunities to reassign administrative burdens so sworn officers can spend more time on community policing. "When we look at records management, evidence management, processing crime scenesthese are all things that we need to move forward on," Conley said. He described the workload assessment as an external, data-based analysis intended to identify the additional staff and functions necessary to deliver contemporary policing services.

Both chiefs said that modern policing and fire operations require investments in integrated technology. Conley sketched an idea for a Northern Arizona Integrated Regional Operations Center (NAIROC) to aggregate disparate data streams, improve disorder-prevention capabilities and support coordinated responses; he noted that such capabilities require a facility, hardware, software and staffing.

Council members voiced support for further study. Several said they expect the issue to require creative funding sources beyond typical rate or fee adjustments. Council Member Aslan urged the team to craft a package that voters could support if the council chooses to go to the ballot. "If were going to move forward, we need to make it good. We need to make it work," Aslan said.

City staff suggested the council could consider a mix of tools used elsewhere, including sales-tax measures, bonds for capital needs, fee restructuring or reassignment of specialized enterprise fees (for example, possible adjustments to the Water Resource Infrastructure Protection fee). Gaillard said many other jurisdictions have pursued similar revenue measures to address public-safety shortfalls.

Ending: Council gave general direction to staff to evaluate funding options, perform additional analysis and return with recommendations. Chiefs and staff emphasized that the workload assessment for the police department is funded and will proceed as a first step.