Special Committee on Ways and Means

Hi, everyone. Good afternoon, late afternoon. My name is Miguel Sanchez. I'm calling, the special committee on ways and means to order. It is Tuesday, October 20 at 05:34PM.

Madam Clerk, we do roll call.

Chair Sanchez.

Present.

Vice Chairman Taylor is absent. Councilor Davidson.

Present.

Councilwoman Graves is absent. Councilwoman Peterson.

Present.

We have three present and two absent.

We have

a quorum.

Thank you. I wanna recognize councilor Vargas that's with us here today. We're waiting on those from the solicitor's office. Thank you, the folks from the clerk's office for being here. Know.

Our order of state

of the office staff.

I know there's a little media. Thank you for also being here. Of course, for administration. So at this time, I'll call forward anyone that is failing to testify to get sworn in, we will do it all at once.

So welcome. Please raise your hand. Do you swear under penalty of perjury that the testimony that you are about to give is the true the whole true and not

the valid true.

I do.

Thank

you. Before we begin, I just wanted to give a quick little spiel. Thank you, everyone, for making the time to be here today. Of course, we are doing this ahead of the winter. We all got a lot of feedback from our neighbors that the city's response.

Although we all understand it was historic, snow levels and and temperatures, we did not meet the expectations, of our neighbors. We wanna make sure that we're as fully prepared as possible going into this upcoming winter and using this space to identify any additional support that our city departments might need to start doing that now. So that being said, I will entertain a motion to enter exhibit one into the record

Second.

Which should be made by councilor Peterson, seconded by councilor Davidson. All those in favor,

aye.

Any nays, any abstentions, any discussions? The ayes have it. So we'll start with item one.

If the clerk can read that into the record and anyone presenting on item one can can come around the table.

Discussion relative to snow preparation, planning, and winter weather unified command. The following have been invited. Clara D'Servo, director, Providence Emergency Management Agency.

Maddie, when you want? Hello. Good evening, everyone. Thank you for having me. I'm.

I'm the director of Providence Emergency Management Agency, and thank you for giving me an opportunity to run through some of the preparations that we've made for the upcoming winter storm season. I've got a few slides, and then if there's any questions, feel free to interject along the way or if you have any questions afterwards. First of all, I wanted to give a quick overview because I know it's been in the news a lot lately that we are in an El Nino cycle. So just a quick refresher for anyone who is not quite as much of a weather nerd as I am. What an El Nino means is that we have a shifted jet stream, meaning that stronger southern storm cracks with more coastal moisture are likely to impact Rhode Island this winter.

One of the things that kinda gets thrown around in the media is this means we are going to have a quote, unquote mild winter. That does not necessarily mean good things for us in terms of total impacts from storms. What this means with a milder winter is that temperatures tend to be a little bit warmer, which means the atmosphere can hold more moisture, which means we are more likely to have more rain, more wintery mix, more icing, and the potential for heavier, wetter snow. Colder winter actually means that we're likely to get less snow overall and have it be drier and lighter, which means it's easier to move. So an El Nino winter, if people are gonna say it's gonna be a mild winter, that does not necessarily mean we're going to get off easy in any way, shape, or form.

The great ice storm of ninety eight, if anyone remembers that, it cost about 40,000,000,000 worth of damage, and that was Nal Nino winter. So as we prepare for this winter storm season in particular, I'm paying particular attention to the fact that is Nalino likelihood for more rain, more icing, more wintery mix, and heavy wet snow, and that's impacting some of, how we are preparing for the season as well. Alright. So one of the first things that we do as we're preparing for any winter storm season this year is no different is we have initial coordination and discussions with the National Weather Service. They have given us some presentations, us being the emergency management director for Rhode Island and Southern New England about what El Nido means, what the likely impacts are based on the existing weather trends, and what we should be expecting.

We also coordinate with Rhode Island Emergency Management Agency in their preseason preparations, what resources they have on hand. They check-in with us about what preparations we're taking on the local level. So those are all kind of standard preseason preparations. We have a annual winter storm season brief, formally from the National Weather Service. That is scheduled for November 4 this year.

That's when they go over kind of the large scale meteorological trends and forecasting trends that they're expecting, if there's any changes based on jet stream impacts that they're expecting. And they also go over what... Any changes they've made to our winter storm products. We get different product packets that they're sent... That they send in advance of any, major impact in storms, and sometimes they make changes to threshold levels or products that they're pushing out.

And it's an opportunity for us to give them feedback as well. That's scheduled for November 4. We also hold an annual mayor's emergency advisory board tabletop exercise that is currently scheduled for this Friday, October 23. I typically hold that in eve... Sometime before Thanksgiving.

I wanna make sure that it's done by by the middle of November, typically. This year, it'll be on this Friday. Like I said, as part of us preparing for an El Nino winter, the scenario that I have picked for the mayor's emergency advisory board tabletop is a little bit of a different scenario than what we did last year based on the expected potential conditions for this year. We do a storm prep checklist review. Yep.

So so what exactly does that tabletop or surgery look like?

It typically lasts between sixty and ninety minutes depending on the scenario and how many rounds we're going to do in it. And I actually have, in a couple of slides what the key decision points are as part of the emergency advisory board meeting. So every emergency advisory board meeting has predetermined decision points that the mayor and the senior administration officials need to make regarding, storm preparations and action levels. The emergency advisory board tabletop exercise is held on Zoom. I present the forecast scenario.

I actually send out for mock tabletop exercise forecast a few days in advance just like I would in advance of a storm. And then for the exercise, we run through a NOC, emergency advisory board call with a mayor having to make decisions based on input from department directors. And we do these at least twice a year. So we do one in preparation for hurricane season in the spring, and we do at least one in the fall in preparation for winter storm season. Sometimes we hold them for other major incidents.

We've done them bracket prep before as well. Alright. We... Pima holds the... A storm prep checklist.

Those are things like making sure that our logins for National Weather Service Slack channels are up to date, making sure that our web VOC logins are all set for this season. So we have a whole checklist that we go through to make sure that we have all the access that we need, the credentials that we need, the proper contact information. As part of that, we also update the contact information for the mayor's emergency advisory board contact list, make sure everybody is current in that. And then when that is completed, we do an emergency advisory board, the EAB cons test, typically around November or December. And we use, the guest WPS, which is an emergency, phone system, radio chat, and a red check as well.

So those... That's kind of the chemo list of things that we do in a standard year to prepare for winter storm season. Any questions on any of these? Alright. So the mayor's EAV, to your question about what the key decision points are, there are prescripted agendas for these calls.

They are run-in a very structured manner. The decision... The major department directors present their department preparations to the mayor and the senior staff, and then there are key decision points that happen along the way. These are some of the major decision points involved in a winter storm scenario. We obviously have a...

There's some of the same decision points, but they're a little bit different for a hurricane scenario or another non weather related incident. So what DPW assets are going to be allocated, the times they are going to start treating or filing, how many vendors are gonna be called in, and the status of DPW assets is one of the first major decision points and discussion items during a winter storm EAV specifically. The treatment and plowing timing is really important, and I'm sure the DPW director will get into this, but you have to have certain conditions in order to effectively treat or start plowing. If you don't have those weather conditions, then it doesn't make any sense to treat because it won't be effective. One of the particular items with a El Nino winter where we're likely to have storms that start as rain and transition into snow is that it makes treatment much more challenging and poses an additional challenge in that regard.

The towband timing and whether we do a towblitz and what time of the towblitz is a decision point on the EAV. The park snow removal plan, so how many park assets are being activated to support the snow removal operations. Rec center staff... Public safety staffing, are there going to be additional personnel activated for police, fire, or telecoms to work in those departments? School closures and delays, city staffing levels, we have a tiered staffing sis...

Level system for city staff. And if there are any major events happening in the city, if there's PPAC activated, the vets, things happening at the amp, all of those are discussed and taken into consideration as well. EOC activation, the emergency operations center activation level and time and what departments are going to be represented at the EOC, whether

we

need to activate emergency shelters. One that I forgot to put up there is whether we need to declare a state of emergency on the local level as a decision point, three one one hours, and, extended operating days, and then a communication plan. So all of these are major decisions that have to be determined on these calls. Typically, the way it works is that department directors will make a recommendation, and then we receive feedback either from other department directors, the chief of operations, the chief of staff, and the mayor. And then, ultimately, the mayor at the end of the call approves the plan, and then we proceed with communication and all of the department director's action on that plan.

I know that's a lot of information very quickly. Any questions on there? Alright. So I also wanted to give a little bit of an update, on the emergency operations center, what we do there for those who are not familiar with it, who staffs it, how all of that works. So the EOC is the central coordination facility during any major incident in the city of Providence.

It is located at FEMA 591 Charles Street. I welcome any of you who have not already come... Seen our facility to come see it. We're very fortunate that we have the emergency operation center facilities that we do for the city, and it is where we operationalize and coordinate the city's response to any major incident. It can be activated for anything from preplanned events to major winter storms.

It was activated for the winter storms last winter as well.