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

OFFICIAL MEETING MINUTES SOUTH AREA FIRE & EMERGENCY RESPONSE DISTRICT Board of Directors Meeting Tuesday, April 13, 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 17:59 by SAFER Chairman Al Opall. Members Present Board of Directors – Langenhahn, Maloney (*arrived later), Opall, Schaefer and White were all present. Also present: Town of Rib Mountain – Administrator Rhoden and Finance Director Dunbar; Village of Weston – Director of Finance Trautman; Ruder Ware Law Firm – Attorney Robert Reinertson; SAFER – Fire Chief Savage, Deputy Fire Chief Finke, EMS Division Chief Bechel, Battalion Chief Lang, Captain Stieve and Administrative Assistant Latimer. There was 1 guest. 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 March 9, 2021. Motioned by White to approve prior meeting minutes from March 9, 2021. Second by Langenhahn. Motion carried unanimously. Board of Directors approval of expenditures and receipts from March 2021. Motioned by Schaefer to approve expenditures and receipts from March 2021. Second by White with a question. - White said I see there are payments and receipts from the Village of Weston. - Trautman said those are for the deficit. Motion carried unanimously. D. Business Items Discussion and possible action on Holiday Pay for Easter. - Chief Savage said currently Easter always falls on a Sunday, so that was never put in the Handbook about holiday pay. We are asking for approval for holiday pay which is time and a half on Easter Sunday with total cost to the budget of $1,125.00, which is easily absorbed. - White said I’m familiar with holiday pay in a different form, so holiday pay you received whether you worked it or not. - Chief Savage said not in this case. Only when you’re on duty. Action: Motioned by Schaefer to approve Holiday Pay on Easter. Second by White. Motion carried unanimously. Discussion and possible action on changes of deposit accounts at Peoples State Bank. - Chief Savage said as referring to Mr. White’s comment about Accounting principles, I’m going to turn this over to Dunbar. - Dunbar said currently SAFER has four different accounts and it makes it a real mess to reconcile. One account has 6 figures in it and it’s not collecting interest. We would like to consolidate into one account all accruing interest. We want your approval to be able to do that. - Deputy Chief Finke said the reason there are four accounts right now is we have our General Operating account, then a Sweep account, third our Capital Budget account that was requested by the Board and the fourth is one that is required by State Statute for our FAP funding, Financial Assistance Program from the State which has to be in a separate account. What Dunbar is saying is with the new accounting software we can account for all those separately that way. Sounds like that will make the Auditors happy. Action: Motioned by White to approve the change in deposit accounts to a singular account except for the Statutory account at Peoples State Bank. Second by Schaefer. Motion carried unanimously. Discussion and possible action on purchase/or lease of IT equipment. - Deputy Chief Finke said basically what this is for is a Firewall service and we can either rent or purchase them. We do have money in the Capital Budget to purchase them, but then we’re on the hook for maintenance and those types of things over the years. We have the option of renting or leasing to spread the cost out. - Captain Stieve said we’re trying to transition a bit, obviously my years here are short. I’m trying to get to where we’re self-sufficient and unfortunately, we don’t have anybody who is going to step up after me. - Schaefer asked did you budgeted for this? - Deputy Chief Finke said yes, we budgeted to purchase them and then Captain Stieve brought this idea of a lease to us. We budgeted $22,000.00 and if we did the lease, we would have more than enough for this year. Obviously, there would be a recurring cost over the next 2 years and beyond that. (*Maloney arrived) $8,340.00 per year would be our lease cost, were they are going to give us the equipment and manage the equipment for three years at that cost per year. - Schaefer said and how much is it to buy it? - Captain Stieve said I don’t see that sheet here, but it was right around $15,000.00 and the maintenance is on top of that. - Schaefer said how much would you anticipate you would spend per year in calling them? - Deputy Chief Finke said we’re spending some months between $200.00 - 500.00, and we also have very old equipment. - Chief Savage said that’s on top of having Captain Stieve come in and fix the problem, and also to pay him. - Maloney said I’m sorry I’m here late, but we’re replacing our current system? - Captain Stieve said two firewalls and one or two switches. - Schaefer said the question here is, do we go with a $8,340.00 per year for 3 years which includes support, or spend $15,000.00 to buy the switches and firewall and pay extra for support. Action: Motioned by Schaefer to purchase from RMM the IT equipment. Second by Maloney. Motion carried unanimously. Update on EMS Billing. - Deputy Chief Finke said the Executive Summary Report in the packet is through March 17 which is almost the first full quarter of the year. The big item from LifeQuest is because of Covid in 2020 and a lot of jobless people that are now private pay instead of having health insurance. Everybody’s private pay numbers are up which is not good. Discussion and possible action on Second Amendment to the SAFER Charter 2021 v3 and Job Descriptions. - White said I don’t think we made a lot of changes from v2. - Schaefer said under Ownership of Assets, Exhibit B. - White said that is another document that I was unable to find. - Chief Savage said we never had an Exhibit B. - White said I think the thought was if we had other municipalities that joined and didn’t have physical assets such as a building, that there would be a lease agreement so that these municipalities that came in and didn’t have any physical structures would be paying for the Village and the Town’s buildings and assets. - Chief Savage said that’s basically where it ended, because we had agreements with both the Village and the Town as far as at Station 1, we do the snow removal and lawn care and Station 2 we don’t. - Schaefer said we should come up with an Exhibit B that’s formal. - White said I actually have some of those agreements available. - Chief Savage said we have some in draft form.  Action: No action required. Discussion and possible action on Appendix A of the SAFER Charter. - White said there are four different documents for Appendix A. - Deputy Chief Finke said the amount is $970,865 for the Village of Weston and $1,380,742 for the Town of Rib Mountain. - Schaefer said can Exhibit A be those two numbers? Action: Motioned by Maloney to approve $970,865 for the Village of Weston and $1,380,742 for the Town of Rib Mountain as Appendix A. Second by Schaefer. Motion carried unanimously. Fire Commission Appointments. - Maloney said we have Jackan and Fiene and I show they’re both up in 2021? - White said according to the Charter each municipality has a prime pick for the Fire Commission. The other three are picked by this governing body. - Maloney said the discussion that we had is that Jackan is the pick from the Village. Sparks thought it was just the opposite and to be honest after I thought about that more, the longer standing one is Jackan and should be the one from the Village. Board of Directors Appointment. - Maloney said I would appoint White and myself again. - Opall said I would appoint Schaefer and myself. Action: Motioned by Opall to nominate Langenhahn to the Appointment of the Board of Directors. Second by Maloney. Motion carried unanimously. Discussion and possible action on engagement letter with Ruder Ware Law Firm. - Opall said we went to Mr. VanderWaal who is our attorney and he recommended we go with Mr. Reinertson who had the information already. Action: Motioned by Maloney to approve the engagement letter with Ruder Ware Law Firm. Second by Schaefer. Motion carried unanimously. Attorney Referral. - None. End of Month Budget review. - Deputy Chief Finke said in the revenue section there’s three municipalities that are at 200% and we are currently working on correcting that. Overall, the budget looks good. Looking at wages, Part-Time Overtime is at 86% because we are short Part-Time employees and we have a handful of employees that like overtime and work a lot. We did bring on three people and we’re looking at two more. 19:09 Motion by Maloney to adjourn to closed session pursuant to Wisconsin Statute Section 19.85(1) (e) Deliberating or negotiating the purchasing of public properties, the investing of public funds, or conduction other specified public business, whenever competitive or bargaining reasons require a closed session: Contract negotiations with Joint Service with the Village of Marathon. Wisconsin Statute Section 19.85(1) (g) Conferring with legal counsel for the governmental body who is rendering oral or written advice concerning strategy to be adopted by the body with respect to litigation in which it is or is likely to become involved: Pending Litigation. Second by Schaefer. Roll-call vote: NAME: Aye Nay Langenhahn X Maloney X Schaefer X  White X Opall X Motion carried unanimously. 19:52 Motion by Schaefer to return to open session. Second by Maloney. Roll-call vote: NAME: Aye Nay Langenhahn X Maloney X Schaefer X White X Opall X No action taken in open session after returning from closed session. White had opened the door and no one returned for open session. E. Staff Reports Report from Fire Chief - Chief Savage said you’re up to speed with what we have been working on for the last week or so. The ski hill has shut down and we had the highest call volume in the last 7 years. Report from Deputy Fire Chief - Deputy Chief Finke said Kathy Fritsch is one of our Firefighter/EMTs and recently had retired from 911 EMS and Fire. She is now one of our Interfacility EMTs which she’s been doing for several months. About 6 weeks ago she suffered a stroke and she doesn’t have health insurance. We are having a fundraiser for her this coming Sunday at Trailside in Weston. 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, May 11, 2021 at 18:00 at Rib Mountain Town Hall. - Schaefer has nothing. - Langenhahn has nothing. - White said since there’s been a change in Directorship at NTC, do you think it would be appropriate to reach out and try to mend some fences? o Chief Savage said the new Director of Public Safety at NTC reached out to me and we had a very successful discussion and talked about the same thing and wants to start having students come to SAFER again. We have started the process of mending fences and I’m very optimistic with getting things back with NTC. - Maloney has nothing. - Opall has nothing. G. Adjourn Motion by Langenhahn to adjourn. Second by Schaefer. Motion carried unanimously. Opall adjourned at 20:00