05-23-2022 Council Packet - Laserfiche WebLink

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Long Lake City Council May 23, 2022 City of Long Lake 450 Virginia Avenue, PO Box 606 Long Lake, MN 55356. RE: Long Lake Fire Department Members of the Long Lake City Council, We have received your letter, dated May 17th, 2022, and offer the following as our written response. Per our letter of April 13th, 2021, the City of Orono is exercising its rights as outlined in the relevant fire service and joint ownership contracts to end said contracts at the end of 2025. This action came after correspondence and discussion over the management of the fire department between the two cities dating back to 2016. The City of Orono continues to hold that it is in the best interest of Orono taxpayers that the city owns and directly manages the fire and emergency services that serve our citizens. It is not fiscally responsible for the city to continue to fund 80%+ of an organization that it does not manage. Ownership will allow Orono to provide the necessary oversight to ensure fiscally responsible long-term resourcing of the emergency service organization and equipment to meet our community’s needs. The City of Orono continues to hold the members of the Long Lake Fire Department in the highest esteem. They provide both our communities with professionalism, honor, and selfless service. It is our fervent hope and desire that we can conclude this transition process with as little disruption to the firefighters as possible and with the goal of ensuring that in the future they are adequately equipped, resourced, and supported to provide critical emergency services to our communities. The City of Orono’s preferred path forward is to come to an agreement with Long Lake on the full transfer of the Long Lake Fire Department to Orono. We believe this path to be the least disruptive to the department and the communities served. We request the Long Lake Council agree to resume discussion/negotiation with us to that end. We offer Exhibit A as an answer to your questions and consolidate the previous offers we have attempted to negotiate. If the two cities cannot come to an agreement on the transfer of the department by August 1st, 2022, Orono will be forced to move on and start executing our plan B which is to build our own Fire Department from scratch. With current equipment procurement timelines, we will need to commit to procuring the items we do not already own and recruiting personnel to be ready to assume responsibility by January 1st, 2026. We will then need to work together to decide what to do with all the jointly owned assets at some point in the future.