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

OFFICIAL MEETING MINUTES SOUTH AREA FIRE & EMERGENCY RESPONSE DISTRICT Board of Directors Meeting Tuesday, March 9, 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 Vice Chairman Mark Maloney. Members Present Board of Directors – Langenhahn, Maloney, Schaefer and White were all present, Opall was absent and excused. Also present: Town of Rib Mountain – Administrator Rhoden and Finance Director Dunbar; Village of Weston – Director of Finance Trautman; SAFER – Deputy Fire Chief Finke, EMS Division Chief Bechel, Fire Marshall Christiansen, Battalion Chief Lang, Battalion Chief Lohman, Lieutenant Zellner and Administrative Assistant Latimer, Fire Chief Savage was absent and excused. There were 3 guests. 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 February 9, 2021. - White said I did note one error and talked to Latimer about it a statement attributed to me is “pretentious” and I meant and said contentious. Motioned by White to approve prior meeting minutes from February 9, 2021 with the corrections. Second by Langenhahn. Motion carried unanimously. Board of Directors approval of expenditures and receipts from January and February 2021. Motioned by Schaefer to approve expenditures and receipts from January and February 2021. Second by Langenhahn. Motion carried unanimously. D. Business Items Award presentation to Lieutenant Zellner and Battalion Chief Lohman. - Deputy Chief Finke said we have two of our members here this evening that we’re going to have a short award presentation for. This is something new for us and about a year to eighteen months ago we developed a SOP that has an award nomination policy or procedure. If someone feels one of our Firefighters, Paramedics, or EMTs went above or beyond the call of duty, they can submit them for an award that will be reviewed by an internal Board and that award may be approved or denied. This was the first one that was brought forward, by Battalion Chief Lang it was reviewed internally and we choose to give these two individuals an award based on their actions for that day. This is not something that is going to happen frequently and so the Board is aware there are multiple different levels of awards. On December 12, 2020 SAFER was dispatched to the Town of Bevent as mutual aid with Hatley Fire Department for a structure fire. As Rescue 21 was on the highway returning to the fire station from a previous call, Battalion Chief Andrew Lohman made the decision to respond in the Rescue along with Lieutenant Zellner. At the time Lieutenant Zellner was a Firefighter and since then has been promoted to Lieutenant. Upon arrival Rescue 21 was first apparatus on scene. Battalion Chief Lohman and Lieutenant Zellner took quick action setting up the Rescue to pump, pulling a hand line and quickly extinguishing the fire on the exposed structure, containing the fire to building of origin. A detached garage on the side of the  residential structure with the initial aid of only one Hatley Firefighter that was on scene, with no other fire apparatus present. As the fire extinguishment and control continued, water became low on our responding Rescue. Upon arrival of Hatley Fire Department, Lieutenant Zellner broke away from his hand line to help set up water supply from Hatley Engine, while Battalion Chief Lohman with one Hatley Firefighter made entry into the residence to ensure any remaining fire was extinguished. Once the fire was for the most part extinguished, Hatley crews assisted further in overhaul. All though it is our job to prevent the loss of property on a daily bases, the quick actions of only two crew members prevented what could’ve been a devastating loss to a family. The hard work and training that is displayed on a regular basis by both Battalion Chief Lohman and Lieutenant Zellner goes on full display during times of great need. I would like to thank both Battalion Chief Lohman and Lieutenant Zellner for their dedication to the District and present them with the Unit Commendation bar for their excellence on December 12, 2020. Discussion and action on Second Amendment to the SAFER Charter 2021 v2. - White said as well as I heard them, I made those changes to the version we saw at the last meeting and that is what you see here. It was helpful to have Deputy Chief Finke give me some feedback and also Chief Savage on some of those issues. Also, the minutes were very helpful. There have been some things added though. Page 3, number 6 the items you see underlined are new or changed and the items that are strikethrough will be gone. I prefer it this way so you can see what was and what will be. The next change is under number 9 and it was mentioned by Chief Savage a lot of those things under Powers are done by himself and/or Deputy Chief Finke. Under Section IV. Administration, starting at number 2 are the changes or additions that were sent to me by Chief Savage and Deputy Chief Finke. The items in Red are the items that were added and they weren’t in the previous version. Item 6 is a new position and item 7 is also a new position. There’s a change in definition in item now 8. The other comment Chief Savage made to me was these positions have not been verified by the Fire Commission yet. - Deputy Chief Finke asked to be excused for a quick minute for a picture. - Maloney said okay. - Schaefer said this is just a question and some of this is fine like Fire Marshal as opposed to Inspector, but when you get down into Captain, Engineer/Paramedic it’s getting into the weeds a little bit. - White said we do have definitions for Deputy Fire Chief, EMS Division Chief and Battalion Chiefs. Further on down we have Part-Time and Majority-Time Professionals and I think that is something for Deputy Chief Finke to elaborate on as far where that came from. I’m just trying to fit all basis so we don’t come back in 4 or 5 months and say we need to add this. I still cannot find Exhibit A. - Schaefer said Deputy Chief Finke, my comments was, are we getting too far into the weeds with adding more language? I guess in the past we had Battalion Chiefs, Fire Inspector and then we went right too Paid on Call Professionals and of course you have Captains and Engineer/Paramedic, so you’re calling out all the different pieces that you have now. - Deputy Chief Finke said we could certainly narrow it down to Fire Chief, Deputy Fire Chief and then Full-Time and Part-Time and it could be all encompassing within those two headings. - Maloney said in the new 8, where is the MPO? - Deputy Chief Finke said that position was eliminated. - White said can you explain the evolution of why these things where done? - Deputy Chief Finke said several reasons, let’s use the Engineers for example. Engineers and MPO can somewhat be taken interchangeably and we’ll say for the meeting, they are basically the same position. We were having difficulty getting Part-Time people to meet the qualifications for MPO, so we moved that into a Full-Time position. As we’ve hired those Full-Time people over the last couple of years where we’ve added those positions, those individuals are both an Engineer and Paramedic which are two qualifications that the District needs to have 24/7. We’ve encompassed that in a Full-Time position so we know that we have them on duty all the time. Some of the other things that were eliminated and the reason we went from Fire Inspector to Fire Marshal is to stay concise with other local departments. The Captain (FTE) is brand new and in fact we’ll be doing interviews for those next Monday and we’ll talk a little bit more on that in my report. - Schaefer said the EMS Division Chief and Battalion Chief say “The Fire Chief shall appoint, subject to the approval of the SAFER Fire Commission”, and no other position has that.  - Deputy Chief Finke said the verbiage should be the same for Deputy Fire Chief, EMS Division Chief, Battalion Chief, Fire Marshal and actually it should be the same for all of the positions. - Schaefer said is that part of the Commission’s job is to approve all the District’s hires? - Deputy Chief Finke said we have not traditionally taken Part-Time hires to them. But any Full-Time position has gone to the Fire Commission. - Schaefer said then if the Commission doesn’t approve the Part-Time hires then number 8 should not say “subject to the approval of the SAFER Fire Commission”. - Schaefer said Exhibit A, it’s not here and we cannot find it. Is it something we want to develop? It’s what we came in with. - White said it’s a document that lists all the assets. I have not seen it since. If Latimer has the document, I think we could take any document noting it’s from 2014 and attach it. - Schaefer said there’s some changes that need to be made and Exhibit A found and then we can circulate it, then it needs to go to each Board. - Trautman said I have the SAFER 2014 Fixed Assets and I have forward them to Latimer. - White said are we talking about Exhibit A? - Trautman said it doesn’t say Exhibit A, but it’s the initial balances that were given to each municipality on the first day. - Schaefer said we can deem that to be Exhibit A. Action: No action taken. Attorney Referral. None End of Month Budget review. - Deputy Chief Finke said the budget is attached in the Packet. Some of the numbers, don’t let them scare you that they’re high initially like repairs and maintenance for other machinery, a lot of annual maintenance is done in the first couple months of the year. I need to look at the Fire Software line, that seems higher than it’s supposed to be. - White said the bottom line at this point, where do you stand on expenditures, and where do you stand on your revenues? - Deputy Chief Finke said our revenue should be right on budget. Our EMS revenue have been right on or actually a little bit ahead of budgeted. - Trautman said this is December and January, LifeQuest is always one month behind. We just received February’s revenue from LifeQuest last week, so they will be put in now in March. - Schaefer asked how much was it? - Deputy Chief Finke said $78,586.12. Capital is attached also and nothing huge on capital yet. The big purchase there will be the two ambulances which won’t be done for a while yet. - Maloney said ETA on those? - Deputy Chief Finke said mid to late summer. Action: Motioned by White to acknowledge the End of Month Financial Reports. Second by Schaefer. Motion carried unanimously. E. Staff Reports Report from Deputy Fire Chief - Deputy Chief Finke said I can’t remember if it was last meeting or the meeting before, but we were directed to turn over the open Fire and Rescue bills that we have to a collection agency. I reached out to LifeQuest which is our billing company and they have a collections agency within their system. They said they would be happy to work on that. We will have to manually enter those in and hopefully we can start to collect on that. That will be on going in the next week or two. - The remodel at Station 2 is almost done. The last couple projects are dragging out, but it’s getting close. They finished the garage doors today. There are a couple things from the punch lists that need to be finished from our side and the PD side. The Battalion Chiefs office is the big thing, they’ve been working in a temporary office for about 3 months.  - We had a HazMat incident yesterday that we responded to with the City of Mosinee for Mutual Aid. It was myself and our Intercept Paramedic. We were there for about 2-3 hours, it went very smooth and no injuries. - We do remain to be very busy and we’re up 41 calls from last year at this point and over half have been interfacility. - An interesting call that happened in Cadott or Cornell where a firefighter was shot. Something that we experience very frequently on calls that we go to. People have ammunition or loaded weapons in their house, and it’s very common to hear ammunition going off 75% of the time. Unfortunately, there was a loaded firearm and it discharged inside the house and the bullet went through the house and struck a firefighter who was working outside in the abdomen. - We had a significant fire about 2 weeks ago in the Town of Marathon a very cold morning. We responded with Marathon Fire for an old farm house. Everything went well and knocked down the fire fairly quickly. 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, April 13, 2021 at 18:00 at Weston Courthouse. - Schaefer said there was a press article about an incident where apparently SAFER didn’t respond in time because there weren’t enough personnel to respond and it was on Channel 9. One of SAFER’s personnel were quoted at the station. • Deputy Chief Finke said I will investigate it and deal with it tomorrow, I know nothing about it. - Langenhahn has nothing. - White has nothing. - Maloney said I would like to give some homework to the crews and come up with a color scheme for the building in Weston. G. Adjourn Motion by Langenhahn to adjourn. Second by Schaefer. Motion carried unanimously. Maloney adjourned at 18:51