Dayton staff to respond to Maple Grove and Rogers over southern fire coverage; duty crew, new ladder truck cited

Dayton City staff told council they will draft a formal response to a March letter from neighboring departments Maple Grove and Rogers that raised concerns about Dayton’s coverage of fires in the city’s southern neighborhoods. Staff said a new duty-crew staffing model and a recently purchased ladder truck should reduce turnout and travel times for many structure fires.

The issue surfaced in a council work session after staff summarized the letter and the timeline of exchanges with Maple Grove and Rogers. City staff outlined several short- and medium-term options the city could offer in its reply, including analyzing South-Dayton-specific response times, proposing a temporary south-side location for duty crews, changing alarm/auto-aid settings, and pursuing a formal mutual-aid agreement or a service contract if the neighboring departments prefer that approach.

Why it matters: Maple Grove and Rogers said they are frequently first on scene in parts of the city and raised concern that their personnel and equipment are being used repeatedly for fires inside Dayton’s boundaries. Council members asked staff to show whether Dayton’s duty-crew model will materially reduce response times for the calls cited in the letter rather than relying on citywide averages.

Staff described the duty-crew schedule and training needs and said the model reduces the delay caused by personnel starting from home. Staff also confirmed the city has acquired a used ladder truck and is planning training before it is used operationally. “As of today, we have purchased 1,” the presenting staff member said regarding the ladder truck.

Fire Chief Gary gave the council turnout-time statistics that staff will use for the analysis: “we had a turnout time anywhere between 7 minutes and 39 seconds is the mean. The median is about 6 minutes and 58 seconds, and the ninetieth percentile is 11 minutes and 6 seconds.” He and staff said having crews based at the station during duty-crew hours—rather than responding from home—should reduce those averages, though he cautioned geographic limits. The chief noted some southwest locations will likely continue to see Rogers or Maple Grove arrive first because those stations are physically closer.

Council members pressed staff to break the numbers out specifically for the South-Dayton calls listed in the letter so the city can show whether the duty-crew model would ‘‘move the needle’’ for those incidents. Staff agreed to provide a South-specific analysis, clearer heat maps for 2025 and 2026, and a comparison to the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) turnout/response benchmarks using a consistent population-density source (council identified the MET Council data as acceptable for that purpose).

On the question of compensation or billing for responses, voices on the dais diverged. Some council members suggested a short-term paid-service arrangement could be practical while Dayton pursues a longer-term stationing strategy; others—including the chief, speaking both as a department head and noting his personal ties to Maple Grove—argued against routinely paying neighboring full-time departments and favored a formal mutual-aid agreement to set shared expectations and any billing rules.

Next steps: staff and the fire chief will prepare and circulate a draft response letter to Maple Grove and Rogers to the council by the end of the week, provide South-Dayton-specific response-time analysis and improved maps, and report back after the duty-crew model rolls out (staff indicated a June 1 start for the duty-crew hours). Council asked for periodic check-ins (for example, at 3-, 6- and 12-month intervals) to evaluate whether the new staffing model reduces the number of canceled/en-route calls and reliance on neighboring departments.

The work session ended with staff confirming the items they will include in the response and a schedule to deliver the requested data to council.