05062025 EMC with Jackson County Emergency Management Meeting

Minutes for Shady Cove Meeting with Jackson County Emergency Mgmt. Date/Time: Tuesday, May 6th 1:45pm – 3:45pm Location: Shady Cove Library Join Zoom Meeting https://us06web.zoom.us/j/82284068191?pwd=oC804a8Rc7FZVKnlwSJJpakGcaCcfo.1 Meeting ID: 822 8406 8191 Passcode: 223866 --- One tap mobile +17193594580,,82284068191#,,,,*223866# US +12532050468,,82284068191#,,,,*223866# US --- Dial by your location • +1 719 359 4580 US • +1 253 205 0468 US • +1 253 215 8782 US (Tacoma) • +1 346 248 7799 US (Houston) • +1 669 444 9171 US • +1 669 900 6833 US (San Jose) • +1 386 347 5053 US • +1 507 473 4847 US • +1 564 217 2000 US • +1 646 931 3860 US • +1 689 278 1000 US • +1 929 205 6099 US (New York) • +1 301 715 8592 US (Washington DC) • +1 305 224 1968 US • +1 309 205 3325 US • +1 312 626 6799 US (Chicago) • +1 360 209 5623 US Meeting ID: 822 8406 8191 Passcode: 223866 Find your local number: https://us06web.zoom.us/u/kcEN4kPLJe 1 1. Announcements & Roll Call 1.1. Call to Order ______1:47PM_________ (time) 1.2. Statement that meeting is being digitally recorded. ** Please note that at various points within this document, there are timestamps shown, such as [20:00]. These represent timestamps within the recording of the public meeting, to help viewers marry the recording to the written minutes. 1.3. Roll Call Name Seat Role/Position Attendance Delaney Richmond Jackson Co. Emergency present Manager Shawn Richards Jackson Co. Deputy present Emergency Manager Jay Taylor 1 SC-EMC Chair present Nancy Martin 2 SC-EMC Vice-Chair present Natalie Swendener 3 SC-EMC Secretary present Mike Martin 4 SC-EMC Member present Open seat 5 SC-EMC Member Paige Winfrey Council Liaison present Michele Parry Shady Cove City absent Administrator Sergeant Amaya Jackson Co. Sheriff Office present Chief Crume Fire District 4 present Kathy Nuckles SC City Council President Present Jon Ball SC Mayor Present Mr. Gary Clark Guest & pending candidate Present for EMC Commissioner 1.4. Pledge Of Allegiance 1. Updates from SC-EMC on work since our last meeting February 3rd, 2025. Completed draft Incident Action Plan, conducted workshop on 3/27/25 with City Council & City Administrator. We have also updated our contact list and started researching support agencies identified by Jackson County (such as RVCOAD & SPIRE). However, most of our work has been focused on preparing for the City Council workshop and update of the first draft Incident Action Plan. Post-workshop, we also prepared a review at the City Council’s request on Lines of Succession and Governance during emergencies. That document has been furnished to the Council, however we haven’t yet had feedback on it. 2  We are also continuing to work on support for computer equipment and Digital software for the SC-EMC. We are currently working on a compliance document to ensure that we meet the rules of Oregon Public Meeting laws when working digitally. 2. Recap from the 3/27/25 SC-EMC & City Council Workshop (Emergency Response expectations) for the benefit of this combined workshop [05:15] The EMC Secretary Natalie Swendener opened this agenda item by noting that while the EMC wants to get into more specific action items, the EMC is still discussing emergency management expectations with the City. Mayor Ball was asked if he would like to give his feedback on the prior City Council/EMC workshop; he declined. The EMC Secretary asked if it was OK if she summarized, and with assent from the Mayor she proceeded to give a summary to participants. The EMC Secretary noted that feedback from the EMC’s initial presentation of a draft Incident Action Plan was felt to be too detailed. She noted that EMC wanted to be very solid on understanding the relevant City governance documents related to emergency management. In the prior workshop (on 3/27/2025), the EMC was told that the Shady Cove City Charter was in conflict with the City’s Emergency Management Ordinance 33 and also in conflict with the lines of succession in the Shady Cove Emergency Operations Plan from 2012. [Note: no reference to the 2012 EOP is provided, as it was removed from the Shady Cove website after the March 27th workshop.] The EMC Secretary noted that as a result of these discrepancies, the EMC had provided a legal research document back to the City Council outlining what they believe are solid arguments which cover the relevant discussion. [Note: this research was requested by the City Council, the document was provided on April 8th. To-date, no specific feedback on the document has been provided.] The EMC Secretary stated that in the absence of solid governance, in an actual emergency where Council couldn’t convene normally it would be difficult to understand who would take charge and what process should be followed to form an ICS structure. The EMC Secretary summarized the previous feedback from the City Council in our March workshop, which was that only a quorum of City Council can make decisions in an emergency, and only one person (the City Administrator) can task city staff with no exceptions for an emergency. She noted that in EMC’s legal research document the commission believed there was support for alternate procedures. Prior feedback from the City Council was that, with limited city staff, the City did not believe it would be appropriate to participate in any Incident response levels where the City actively managed an emergency. The Council felt that with the limited City staff, the City would rather turn everything over to Jackson County. EMC commissioners noted that they disagreed with the City’s position on this and feel that City should remain in a supporting role, with some form of ICS structure. Note: The following links are provided for additional supporting documentation. https://shadycove.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/04172025-Regular-CC-Meeting.mp3 (see the 1:11:45 minute mark in this meeting) 03272025 City Council Workshop with Emergency Management - City of Shady Cove, Oregon 3 3. Open discussion with Jackson County Emergency Management on current Shady Cove Emergency preparedness and next steps to prepare for fire season. [09: 00] Jackson County Emergency Manager Ms. Delaney Richmond spoke, trying to understand the “problem statement”. She noted that the ICS structure isn’t a perfect fit however it is the industry standard used by fire and law. In lieu of focusing on the ICS & EOP, she encouraged the City to think about the process of managing an emergency as an information gathering and resource gap analysis. She also noted that as an incorporated City, Shady Cove has to have some form of structure to respond to an emergency. When the City lacks resources, that is when the City can declare an emergency and then the county can step in to help. In response to a question from Ms. Richmond trying to understand the questions around delegation of authority, the SC-EMC explained that we have questions around: • Who can declare an emergency and speak for city policy if the Mayor isn’t available • Who manages an emergency. Ms. Richmond explained that the EOP shouldn’t be considered as a “forcing function”. She explained that by virtue of being an incorporated City, Shady Cove must have an appointed emergency program manager. [Note: ORS 401.035 states that the executive officer or governing body of each county or city is responsible for the emergency services system within that jurisdiction. Shady Cove’s emergency manager is the City Administrator.] [14:50 – 20:00] Ms. Richmond briefly explained the language of ORS 401.305. Because an incorporated city has an emergency manager, there are some functions that should be performed. However, she noted that this may not be part of our City Administrators’ designated duties. [Note: ORS 401.305 requires counties to have an emergency management agency; this function is optional for cities. Cities that do choose to have an emergency management agency must have an emergency operations plan, an emergency operations center, must implement lines of succession, and must perform the duties that the governing body has designated. The Shady Cove Emergency Management Commission is not considered a formally designated emergency management agency, however it is the opinion of the EMC that we should strive to emulate baseline requirements where feasible.] Ms. Richmond asked Mayor Ball if he had feedback, and at this point EMC Commissioner Jay Taylor stepped in, mistakenly believing the question was directed at him. Commissioner Taylor asked what would be an expected role for the Shady Cove’s emergency manager. Ms. Richmond explained the emergency manager is charged with making sure response is being adequately met, and to ensure coordination with Jackson County steps for assistance when needed. Ms. Richmond explained the City is expected to host the incident response, and that never goes away and is never delegated to the County. When the City makes a declaration of the emergency this allows the County to start working with the City. The County will support the City, and provide wraparound service es, however, the County doesn’t “inherit” the emergency and does not “release” the City from its role in the emergency. There was a discussion of what roles law enforcement and fire department play in an emergency. 4 [20:00]. Mayor Jon Ball stressed a key point that the Incident Commander is the City Administrator and expressed concern that the discussion may be getting confused between the role of the City Administrator/Emergency manager, and the role of the emergency management commission. Ms. Richmond noted that she hoped the emergency manager would not become the Incident Commander, but again the main thing is to figure out what problems need to be solved, and who will be responsible for what roles. Chief Crume stepped into the discussion and explained his organization’s role in a recent fire and how they work with Jackson County Sheriff. He noted that the prior water crisis was a different type of emergency, as it was a slow-rolling event that really didn’t require intervention by Fire or Law Enforcement. He noted that in this type of scenario there is a gap that needs to be filled by someone other than Fire or Law enforcement. Ms. Richmond clarified that her recommendation to avoid having the Emergency Manager become the Incident Commander applied to scenarios where there is a unified command (i.e., when multiple agencies work together, which is typically when an emergency escalates). It is only in that scenario where the City’s emergency manager shouldn’t be the Incident Commander. To paraphrase the meeting discussion, the key takeaway from the County, Sheriff, and Fire attendees at the meeting is that there were different levels of emergencies and some (such as the water crisis) may be appropriate for the City to directly manage. [23:40] Mr. Gary Clark asked a question about chain of command. He used the example of a fire that sweeps up the hill and into the gas station and wanted to know what the hierarchy or chain of command would be. The EMC Secretary stated that at this point, “we don’t know what the hierarchy is”. She noted that EMC is happy to support whatever the City wants during an emergency, but at this point, there is no definitive agreement, many individuals may be gone from the City, and EMC can’t articulate how we can or should help. Ultimately, the responsibility lies with the City Council & City Administrator to clarify roles & responsibilities. Chief Crume noted that if there isn’t a full-blown emergency, someone at the City may need to take charge. He noted that emergencies are never static, and that the Fire Department’s priority is always life-safety, incident stabilization, and then protection of property. [30:00 – 35:30] There was a brief discussion of the pros and cons of whether Shady Cove’s emergency manager should get access to Jackson County’s Everbridge system in order to be able to send alerts to City residents. Council President Kathy Nuckles was concerned about giving this responsibility to the City Administrator; Ms. Richmond noted she “wasn’t pushing” this it’s simply an option for the City to consider. Towards the end of this discussion [35:43] , Mr. Clark jumped in with a brief statement. He noted it’s always uncertain when you start a new process, and there might be benefits from having the City send alerts, describing a scenario for a possible child abduction. Mayor Ball noted that alerts like this would be done by the Sheriff. Mr. Clark noted that he and the Mayor had different views, and the discussion resumed. Ms. Richmond went further into a discussion of evacuation alerts including Level 3 GO NOW, explaining how this works, how the County EOC is activated, County Commissioners are alerted, and how wraparound services start. She asked what the City would do in an evacuation scenario, and discussed the concept of Continuity of Operations (COOP). She asked how the government of Shady Cove would re-form outside of the area and start to assess the situation & determine priorities, once they know all employees are OK. She wanted to know how the City would operate and briefly discussed how the County would support the City. She also noted that recovery responsibilities would fall on the City. Council President Kathy Nuckles explained that in an emergency none of the City’s staff would be expected “to do anything”, except for the 5 City Administrator. Mayor Ball and Council President Nuckles explained it is not in the City employee’s job descriptions. At approximately [40:00] during the ongoing discussion about employee responsibilities, Mr. Clark attempted to ask a question, however he was not able finish speaking and he noted that the Mayor was shaking his head in disagreement before he was able to complete his question. Mr. Clark noted that participants weren’t understanding his question, but he said he’d pause and let others finish talking. At this point, Mayor Ball said “I’m done. This is rude. I’m not going to waste my afternoon here, I’ve got representatives and state senators that I need to talk to. Have a great day.” He then got up and left the meeting room, leaving Jackson County, Sheriff’s Office, Fire District and other attendees perplexed at what set him off. Council President Kathy Nuckles then told Mr. Clark he was “being disrespectful” towards the Mayor and noted he wasn’t a member of the Emergency Management Commission. EMC Secretary Swendener pointed out that this was a public meeting which Mr. Clark was allowed to attend. [Note: Mr. Clark has completed an application to volunteer for the EMC Commission, however his application is still pending, due to the general questions around City guidance for the EMC.] Council President Nuckles continued to explain that the City employee job descriptions do not include emergency functions and also noted that the City didn’t have the budget to adjust those job descriptions. EMC Commissioner Nancy Martin asked if employee job descriptions included the phrase “as assigned”. Council President Nuckles wasn’t certain but was confident their job descriptions didn’t include emergency duties. Council President Nuckles also noted that she hadn’t fully read each job description , but confirmed City employees are under the Teamsters, whose rules are very strict, and only allow duties within the scope of the job. She said they couldn’t be asked to stay around (during an emergency) but could support the City afterwards. Commissioner Martin noted that ICS processes always account for safety of employees and stated that the EMC could be more specific regarding pre and post-emergency actions. [Note: The EMC Commission is not and will not advocate that City Employees put themselves in danger and/or stay during an evacuation. Our questions have been in an attempt to understand what support City employees can (safely) provide before/during/after an emergency, so we understand what resources the City may have. Unfortunately, at this point, the answer seems to be that no emergency support is included in the employee job descriptions.] [43: 00] There was a general discussion on what support the City could provide in an emergency, that was outside the purview of Law Enforcement and Fire District. Ms. Richmond stressed that this is where an EOP (Emergency Operations Plan) could come in handy, and recommended not getting too hung up on ICS processes. She stressed that the City needed boots on the ground to understand what was needed, and said having volunteers at this point would be helpful for the City. She cited several examples where the City’s governing body could use an emergency declaration to support the City and coordinate with the County and State. She again stressed that because Shady Cove is an incorporated City, the City will be expected to manage emergencies on their behalf, with support from the County as appropriate. [62:00] Attendees discussed various topics such as mutual aid agreements for shelters, Red Cross training, and other topics. Ms. Richmond said that she would put the City Administrator on distribution lists for local training and emergency-related events. 6  [71:00] Attendees discussed volunteer support and associated concerns about liability. Ms. Richmond noted that there should be some type of insurance for volunteers, particularly if the volunteer group is not a 501(3) (c ) organization that isn’t already required to have insurance. Council President Kathy Nuckles noted that the City is required to provide insurance if volunteers are expected to perform a function for the City. Ms. Richmond noted that the County has a policy for volunteers that she can send to the City if needed. 4. Review of Feb 3rd EMC meeting with Jackson County previous action items. a. Emergency preparedness documentation (EOC handouts). Jackson County was going to provide some sample documentation to help the SC-EMC manage emergencies. It was decided to defer this, until Shady Cove city council moves forward with defining SC-EMC roles & responsibilities. b. Possible participation in Jackson County evacuation exercise or evacuation drill. Jackson County will be planning an exercise for evacuation in May that would be helpful for us to experience. The tabletop exercise was the day after the meeting, so there wasn’t time to participate. It was to covers evacuation processes & wraparound services. Ms. Richmond also noted that if Shady Cove is interested in conducting an evacuation exercise, there is information online for community evacuation exercises. We briefly discussed combining this exercise with targeted City alerts thru Jackson alerts. Jackson County volunteered to assist with this, and suggested making sure citizens were signed up for alerts with community outreach events. Jackson county would also assist if we wanted to create a Shady-Cove specific evacuation exercise. Our situation is unique because we have limited routes in/out of the city. This item is also on-hold pending City Council direction for the SC-EMC. c. Jackson Alerts training/setup In the previous meeting, we noted that Shady Cove would like to receive training so that we can be designated as an alert sender. City Administrator Michele Parry would be the primary alert sender; the SC-EMC would also like to participate in the training. After receiving training, Michele can also designate someone as a backup for sending alerts. 7  Deferred until City Council decides on direction for SC-EMC. See discussions under item 3. d. Genasys Protect Maps request. During the previous meeting, we briefly talked about how we could get access to the Shady Cove evacuation zone maps, so we could get digital copies. For background, when we go to the website, and pull up one of our zones (ex: https://protect.genasys.com/zones/US-OR-JAC-SHC-157) we can see the zone, but there is no ability to print. However, during some earlier research, we saw there was a way to login, and there was supposed to be a way to get an offline copy of the pre-plan for a zone. Can the county assist in getting a login, or just getting us a copy of the pre-plans for the zones SHC-151, 152, 153, 154, 156 & 157 (there is no zone SHC-155). We'd also be interested in the surrounding zones JAC-131, 132, 137, 158, 159, 164 & 166. If we can get a reasonably large-sized digital copy of the maps (approx 2x3 foot or 3x4 foot drawing sheet), we can arrange to get it printed. Ms. Richmond has PDF maps available of evacuation zones that she can send us. She suggested also putting the maps in one or more accessible spots in/around Shady Cove so that tourists in particular could be aware of that. She recommended we also refer to Talent’s evacuation map. 5. Meeting Wrap-Up - Next steps & Action Items [90:35] Mr. Clark asked both the Fire Chief and Sergeant Amaya if they would both comment on their biggest take- aways of what Shady Cove should understand during an emergency. Chief Crume commented that the City needs to understand how the Fire District operates during an emergency. He briefly described the process and noted that because his agency is only staffed for normal operations, he will ask for mutual aid. He noted that this does not mean he steps out of the emergency, and said there is a lot going on behind the scenes. Finally, he noted that while it may not be appropriate for everyone to do emergency response, they are in the role of disaster planning and disaster planning goes beyond just what the Fire District and Law Enforcement can do. Sergeant Amaya from the Jackson County Sheriff’s office commented that JCSO typically does a unified command when they link up with the Fire District for emergency response. If there is an issue affecting the City, JCSO would prefer to have someone from the City identified in advance to liaison with, and potentially include that person in the command post. Action Items related to Clarifying City Policy for Emergency Management • City Council to work with the City Administrator (the designated Emergency Manager) to determine the roles, responsibility, and liabilities for emergency management within the City, and then confirm direction for SC-EMC. 8  • City Council to review insurance requirements for volunteers. o Jackson county will send the City of Shady Cove information on their county policies for volunteers, which will help the City understand how to handle volunteer liability. • (Unassigned) Look at mutual aid agreements that could be used in an emergency. Look at free training for City volunteers, such as training provided by the Red Cross. Other Action Items: • Jackson county will send PDF maps of the Genasys protect evacuation zones to SC-EMC. The meeting was adjourned at 3:33 pm. 9