S.A.F.E.R. Board of Directors

OFFICIAL MEETING MINUTES SOUTH AREA FIRE & EMERGENCY RESPONSE DISTRICT Board of Directors Meeting Tuesday, January 12, 2021 @ 18:00 A. Call to Order The meeting of the South Area Fire and Emergency Response District Board of Directors was called to order at 18:00 by SAFER Chairman Al Opall. Members Present Board of Directors – Langenhahn, Maloney, Opall, Schaefer and White were all present. Also present: Town of Rib Mountain – Administrator Rhoden and Finance Director Dunbar (via web meeting); Village of Weston – Administrator Donner (via web meeting), Director of Finance Trautman; SAFER – Fire Chief Savage, Deputy Fire Chief Finke, EMS Division Chief Bechel and BC Lang. There was 1 visitor via web meeting at the meeting. B. Correspondence/Comments from the public on issues related to the SAFER District None C. Consent Items Board of Directors approval of prior meeting minutes from December 8, 2020. Motioned by Maloney to approve prior meeting minutes from December 8, 2020. Second by Langenhahn. Motion carried unanimously. Board of Directors approval of vouchers from November 2020. Motioned by Maloney to approve vouchers from November 2020. Second by White. Motion carried unanimously. D. Business Items Discussion and action on Board of Director members. - Maloney said we have talked about it a couple of times and I wanted to know if we actually voted in Langenhahn as the fifth member right now. I think it would be more engaging to have more of our larger contracts involved. - Schaefer said you like to turn to the Charter when you’re looking at what to do. A fifth member being either a citizen of the municipalities or a citizen of the territories served by the District under contract being jointly selected by the Rib Mountain Town Board Chairperson and the Village of Weston President. Then approved by the majority of the Board. Directors shall be made annually, no later than April 30th and shall be approved no later than May 31st. Length of term shall be June 1 to May 31 annually. We have a procedure here and if the Chair and Vice Chair want to talk, or if you wanted to expand it you would have to change the Charter. - Maloney said as the majority 60% payer, I don’t think you (referring to Langenhahn) would ever vote with Weston. I choose the wrong words, I’m pretty blunt and transparent and I know it was a very rebellious time with Sparks. I’m not going to sit here and apologize because I have said some things too, though the feeling I had at that time was we are all alone and we can’t get any attention. - Opall asked White other than this last blow up with the personnel. - White said that aside I honor Langenhahn’s participation in this Board of Directors and I don’t feel he’s ever done anything negative towards either Rib Mountain or Weston or the SAFER Board of Directors. - Maloney said and I stand corrected and my apologies to you Langenhahn. This is not the first time I have said this. You have been very patient and respectful and I appreciate that. I choose the wrong words and I really enjoy our relationship now. Where are we then on this? - Opall said you and I sometime around April 30th we will get together and we will talk. It’s not on the Agenda to vote. - Maloney said if I’m hearing this correctly, if one of us does not agree that it’s enough to stop it? - Schaefer said then we’re with 4 Directors. Whether we approve Langenhahn or not, his term essentially ends May 31st. - Maloney said I will vote with Opall and appointing Langenhahn to another year. Action: Moved to May 2021 Agenda. Discussion and action on 3-year contract with Hawkins Ash. - Deputy Chief Finke said this is nothing significant, the current auditors sent us a contract if we wanted to renew for the next 3 years. It’s a continuation of our current agreement for 2021, 2022 and 2023 for $7,600.00, $7,800.00 and $8,000.00 respectively. It’s our current audit firm and we’ve had not issues with them. Action: Direction to Staff to send RFPs to Audit Firms. Discussion and action on Ambulance RFPs. - Deputy Chief Finke said we received four quotes back, two of them are from the same vendor, but they sell two different brands of ambulances. Three total vendors with four different brands of ambulances. Three of the four came in within budget or under budget which is Osage, Braun, Lifeline and Road Rescue are the four brands of ambulances that we submitted bid requests. Osage and Braun are sold by North Central Emergency Vehicles in Minnesota, Lifeline is sold by Jefferson Fire and Road Rescue keeps on getting bought out by bigger companies. Three were priced very competitively at two ambulances combined with Osage at $489,000.00, Braun at $481,000.00, Lifeline at $488,000.00 and Road Rescue was significantly more expensive at $536,000.00. The last two ambulances that SAFER has purchased have been Braun, we have a Lifeline ambulance which is being replaced, a Med Tech who isn’t in business anymore and a PL Custom that particular truck has been a problem for us, so we didn’t ask them for a quote. - Opall asked who do you have the most faith in, what it boils down to because those three are so close. - Deputy Chief Finke said Chief Savage, myself and EMS Division Chief Bechel discussed them yesterday and we all like the Braun. The big thing we like about the Braun is first of all we’ve had good luck with the two trucks we have from them now and we get very good service from the dealer. All of the quoted ambulances can be remounted, we you take the box off the chassis and put the box on another chassis and you go back to work and save a lot of money. The average cost of a remount is about $80,000.00 to $100,000.00, which is less than half the price and Braun is very well known for that, they by far do the most of them. - White asked when do you feel you’re going to find out how the Braun chassis interchange works? - Deputy Chief Finke said I’ve had experience with that already and they work really well. Spirit for many years they had boxes with 2 to 3 million miles on them. So after these two we only have one more full truck that needs to be replaced and then we won’t have to replace a full truck for a long time. Action: Motioned by Maloney to approve Ambulance RFP from Braun. Second by Schaefer. Motion carried unanimously. Discussion and action on both Municipalities Administrators and Finance Directors attendance to Board of Directors meetings. - Maloney said I brought it up because we are having a little redundancy here and I thought it would make sense to have Rhoden and Dunbar here for the Board meetings and then we would just have Donner and Trautman when at Weston for the Board meetings. I think the sharing and communication between the two, why have all four? The last meeting, we were missing one, and there’s enough meetings for someone to staff. - Schaefer said my point is that the SAFER Board cannot direct, but I will recommend that back to our Town Board. Action: Municipalities will take this to their Board meetings. Discussion of New Fiscal Agents Arrangements. - Chief Savage said we met last week and went over expectations going forward for the shared Fiscal Agents and this is the list that we all came up with and Trautman and Dunbar drafted this together. This is what we came up with and we’re looking for Board input as far as who is going to do what. - Maloney asked under the cash recipes, that is still going to go to Dunbar and Trautman right, even though you’re over seeing it? - Chief Savage said it goes in the books, we physically collect it and we physically deposit it into the bank. The deposit slips go to the Admin Assistant and is overseen by Dunbar and Trautman. - Schaefer said and we have a 3rd party payroll. - Chief Savage said yes. - Schaefer asked and how much do we pay for that? - Deputy Chief Finke said roughly $7,000.00 a year. - Maloney asked and who catches what with a 3rd party, sometimes when they’re not engaged in what’s happening are, they catching everything? Who does all the input? - Chief Savage said it’s a time keeping system from there payroll is processed. - Trautman said and we get the emails as Fiscal Agents and we have the import that information into the GL. - Chief Savage said we’ve spent a considerable amount of time last year to smooth it out. Now it’s running really smooth. It was brought up at the meeting about WRS, that’s all handled by Deputy Chief Finke right now as far as putting people in, taking people out when they leave. Dunbar and Trautman will be handling the monthly remittance. - Trautman said we will take the payroll information, which is the funds that were collected from the employees and record the employer’s contribution and send that over to WRS on a monthly basis. We will also complete the reconciliation at the end of the year. - Chief Savage said we are currently in the process of working on remote access for both Dunbar and Trautman, we have a laptop computer in our server room now that is the brain station and they don’t physically have to come to the fire station, they can do it from their desk. It’s still a work in progress, but we’re really close to getting done. - Maloney asked so Trautman or Dunbar have to physically go over to the fire department now? - Trautman said Trittin and I went over there today to help the Admin Assistant out and we ran through some reports. There’s a little bit of the setup that is part of the training that we said we would do that saved some money for SAFER. - Maloney asked who else has access other than the two financial groups? - Trautman said Trittin. - Maloney said so the two financial groups and their subordinates. - Chief Savage said also Deputy Chief Finke and myself. - Maloney asked you can see tracking on who does what on there? - Trautman said yes it does have the ability to track who does what and what gets changed. - Maloney said so anything that was ever done on there, you can go back to that time and see who actually made that change, so it always has a fingerprint to it. - Trautman said the purpose of us getting this together was to make sure the expectations of us are correct and we are here to support Chief Savage and Deputy Chief Finke. Action: No action needed. Discussion and action on Budget Amendment for Accounts Receivable Module. - Chief Savage said in this conversation we had, we realized part of the software that we didn’t have was the Accounts Receivable part of Caselle and we would really like to add that in. We are asking for a budget amendment to come out of line 48302-1 Sale of Fire Equipment. As you see there is $173,000.00 in there from the sale of two apparatus last year and some miscellaneous items sold that we send the auction. Total amount for this $4,475.00 and that includes the annual support. - Schaefer said so you didn’t budget for that this year, so this would be a budget amendment for the 2021 budget. - Chief Savage said yes. Action: Motioned by Maloney to approve the Budget Amendment for Accounts Receivable Module. Second by Schaefer. Motion carried unanimously.  Discussion and action on Budget Amendment for Fire Chief Review Invoice. - Chief Savage said we received one invoice for $1,500.00 and this was not a budgeted item. I haven’t received a firm number from the Review company. Just as a precaution, what I would like to do is do a budget amendment from line 48302-1 Sale of Fire Equipment, and I would like to take $6,000.00. That is the approximate number that I received. Action: Motioned by Maloney to approve the Budget Amendment for Fire Chief Review Invoice. Second by Schaefer. Motion carried unanimously. Attorney Referral. None Year to Date Budget review. - Chief Savage said I am happy to say that 2020 was a good year and this is not final because we still have some December items floating out there. Ambulance fees we came in above what we were expecting by 106%. Revenues where up from what we expected and what we have spent was down from what we project and we’re sitting right now $115,000.00 in excess for the end of the year and that is going to change once we get a couple bills. - Maloney asked the Cardmember Service voucher, so when that number is given to Dunbar or Trautman to pay, is all the support data with that? - Trautman said they process checks at the fire department. - Deputy Chief Finke said so what happens is our Battalion Chiefs, EMS Division Chief Bechel, Chief Savage and myself all have credit cards and we all have folders for the receipts and at the end of the month our Admin Assistant compiles everything and hands it to me with the credit card bill and I go through and assign line by line which charge goes against which account. E. Staff Reports Report from Fire Chief - Chief Savage said our call volume was good and I’ll turn it over to our EMS Division Chief. - EMS Division Chief Bechel said we ended 2020 with 3,114 ambulance calls which put us up 385 over 2019. Some of it was Covid, but not all. Interfacility we were up 107 over 2019. We lost some standby events because of Covid. - Chief Savage said we’ve been exceptionally busy and our crews have been doing a phenomenal job, we had a couple mutual aid calls one in particular with Hatley where our Engine was first due at a structure fire response in Bevent. Our crew of two, responded and set up attack and literally saved the house. The garage was fully involved and they were able to knock that down and keep it out of the house. Those two individuals did a fantastic job. Our service is second to none, and the Board should be proud, it’s been a fantastic year for running calls. The two individuals are up for Unit Accommodation Awards and what I would like to do is, hand those out at a Board meeting. - Station 2 progress, the upstairs should be completed within the next 2 weeks and it looks fantastic. Right now it’s a little difficult, we didn’t have working lights in any of the bathrooms. Report from Deputy Fire Chief - Deputy Chief Finke said we hired 5 new employees and we may have lost one due to some medical reasons. We will have 4 for sure Part-Time employees and they’ve been through 3 days of Academy and they’re doing well. We did the 2 Full-Time employees without benefits that were approved to be hired. They will be starting February 1st and they are Ben Nelson and Mark Meyers who were offered those positions out of 4 people that applied. We’re keeping the other 2 people on eligibility list for 12 months. - Covid vaccines we’ve had roughly 16-17 people who have received their first round of Covid vaccines. We were originally working with Aspirus, unfortunately they never got us the vaccines. Marshfield Medical Center called up the Battalion Chief on a Sunday and said they have vaccines here and if we can’t use them in the next couple of hours, we’re going to have to through them away, so if you have anyone who wants one and we had a bunch of people go get them that day. Then the same thing happened two weeks later.  - We did purchase the UTV that was budgeted for Capitol for 2021. It was purchased in three phases, the unit itself, the skid that goes into the back and then the trailer that it will be put on. Those came in right at budget. - Next meeting we should have an annual report. - Last year in CIP for 2020 we had money in there $37,200.00 to purchase radios. We waited for that because we put in for a FEMA grant to purchase radios and we didn’t hear back until the end of November and we didn’t get the grant. The theory was that if we would get the grant from FEMA, the money set aside would have been our portion and the grant to buy new radios for the entire department, and unfortunately, we got denied. The money that we had is enough to buy radios for all of the Battalion Chiefs. F. Remarks from the Board of Directors to set the next meeting date as well as discuss items for the next meeting agenda. - Next meeting scheduled Tuesday, February 9, 2021 at 18:00 at Weston Courthouse. - White handed out the Charter with amendments. Please add Charter Amendments to the next Agenda. - Langenhahn has nothing. - Schaefer has nothing. - Maloney has nothing. - Opall has nothing. G. Adjourn Motion by Schaefer to adjourn. Second by Maloney. Motion carried unanimously. Opall adjourned at 19:12