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

OFFICIAL MEETING MINUTES SOUTH AREA FIRE & EMERGENCY RESPONSE DISTRICT Board of Directors Meeting Tuesday, May 10, 2022 @ 18:00 A. Call to Order The meeting of the South Area Fire & Emergency Response District Board of Directors was called to order at 18:00 by SAFER Chairman Al Opall. Members Present Board of Directors – Cronin, Langenhahn, Opall and Schaefer and were all present, Maloney was absent and excused. Also present: Town of Rib Mountain – Finance Director Dunbar; Village of Weston – Director of Finance Trautman; SAFER – Fire Chief Finke, Deputy Fire Chief Lang, EMS Division Chief Bechel and Administrative Assistant Latimer. 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 22, 2022. Motioned by Schaefer to approve prior meeting minutes from March 22, 2022. Second by Langenhahn. Motion carried 4:0. Board of Directors approval of expenditures and receipts from March and April 2022. Motioned by Schaefer to approve expenditures and receipts from March and April 2022. Second by Cronin. Motion carried 4:0. D. Business Items Discussion and possible action on RFP for Ambulance Billing. - Chief Finke said I wanted to get the Boards feeling on our contract with LifeQuest was up last year, so now it’s year-to-year, if we did want to give them notice we have to let them know by October 1st. Not that we want to do that by any means, but I thought it would be a good idea to go for an RFP to see if they’ll give us a better deal. Action: Motioned by Schaefer to direct staff to go out for an RFP for Ambulance Billing. Second by Cronin. Motion carried 4:0. Discussion and possible action on ARPA Funds for Pandemic EMS Bonus Pay. - Chief Finke said we have the ARPA money from both the Village and the Town. The Town’s money is supposed to be used for a one-time Capital purchase, which has to be approved by the Town Board. The Village didn’t put any stipulations on their share and for this we would need to use the funds from the Village. My proposal is to offer the individuals that worked during covid a one-time bonus for working during the pandemic. I think it sends a message that management here, both communities and the Board have the backs of our employees. I also think it does a lot for us with recruitment and retention down the road. My thought was a pay per hour and I did $1.00 for a starting and we can obviously adjust back or forth, but that would come to $69,303.00 and we can increase or decrease. - Opall asked how many people are we looking at? - Chief Finke said I took the employees who worked here in 2021 and continues to work here today, if they left since then I took them off. I would have to go through and count the number of employees, I only counted the hours, so roughly 40 employees. A low amount would be 442 hours and the highest would be 3666 hours. - Schaefer asked do you know what other departments have done? - Chief Finke said I don’t know anyone locally who’s done it, but I’ve read on Facebook vlogs mostly in the Southeastern part of the country like Georgia, Florida, South Carolina area departments. - Cronin asked is there a plan for the rest of the funds? - Chief Finke said we have ideas like, extractor for turn out gear, drying racks for turn out gear, but nothing firm. Action: Motioned by Schaefer to approve the bonus at a $1.00 per hour worked during covid. Second by Cronin. Motion carried 4:0. Discussion and possible action on EMS Bill adjustment. - Chief Finke said we transported a patient from Marshfield Medical Center Weston back to their residence in the City of Wausau, it’s a fairly common occurrence. When the crew got there, which was Battalion Chief McBain and FF/AEMT Riesterer they did an excellent job getting every single piece of paperwork filled out exactly like they’re supposed to. The patient’s son who takes care of all of the payments, received the bill and was not happy the bill was approximately $1,100.00 and his initial request was to write it off, then he said he would settle for the Medicare allowable rate, finally he said I think it should only be $150.00. I told him the Board is fair and I can’t speak for them, I’m assuming they will do something, but I highly doubt they will write it off because it’s not fair to other people. - Opall asked what is the Medicare rate on that? - Chief Finke said $431.41. - Opall asked should we offer him that? - Chief Finke said I think he’ll be happy with that. - Schaefer said that’s what we would’ve got anyway. - EMS Division Chief Bechel said if insurance would’ve paid it. Action: Motioned by Schaefer to reduce the bill to $431.41. Second by Cronin. Motion carried 4:0. Discussion and possible action on part-time Fire Inspector. - Chief Finke said we’re having a problem keeping up with fire inspections. We have Fire Marshal Christiansen as our full-time Fire Marshal and he gets inspections done every year, but the issue we’re running into is the reinspection and some of these businesses we have to go back multiple times. Especially in the Village we have some buildings like Wausau Supply and the hospital takes him a full day to inspect because they’re so massive. He spends a fair amount of time on Rib Mountain Drive obviously a lot of places to go in and out of. What we’re struggling with is keeping up with the reinspection and two reasons this becomes an issue is first a public safety issue and second if and when we get audited for 2% dues. Our crews try to get out and do these, but we’re short staffed and busier with call volumes being up. - Opall asked would this be a hire or sub-contract? - Chief Finke said my proposal is we advertise it internally and this would only be for the remainder of 2022 and when budget season rolls around, we will have to reevaluate. Not to go over $10,000.00, which I feel comfortable within the budget with how the EMS revenue and budget looks. - Schaefer said I don’t like midyear budget cycle hires; it has to be an emergency. - Cronin said if it’s something we need to do to get through this year and plan for it for next year, could we dedicate some of the ARPA funds to this in the event that the budget doesn’t cover or falls short at the end of the year? - Chief Finke said yes, we could. Action: Motioned by Schaefer to allow a part-time Fire Inspector as an internal hire and spend no more than $10,000.00. Second by Cronin. Motion carried 4:0. Discussion and possible action on Fund Balance Policy changes. - Trautman said it is up to the Board on what you would want the reserve to look like.  - Dunbar said the changes were on the last page, there was no percentage to begin with. It was 25 – 33% which is 3 – 4 months of expenses. - Schaefer said I’d rather say have it up to 33% of the annual budget. - Trautman asked does anyone know where we’re at? - Schaefer said I think it’s $700,000.00. 25 – 33% and if we go over, one-time capital items. If we go under, the Town and Village can consider that. Can you take what we just said and come back to the Board with a written policy? Action: Direction to staff. Fire Commission Appointments. - Opall said for the Town of Rib Mountain’s end, Campbell is our 2-year appointee and Hebbe is our 1-year appointee. I would like to reappoint Campbell to the 2-year and Hebbe to the 1-year. Action: Motioned by Schaefer to approve the recommendation. Second by Langenhahn. Motion carried 4:0. Board of Directors Appointments. - Opall said I would like to appoint Schaefer, if you would like it? - Schaefer said yes, I will continue to serve. Does Langenhahn have to be reappointed? - Administrative Assistant Latimer said yes. - Opall said so it will be Cronin, Langenhahn and Schaefer for appointment. Action: Motioned by Schaefer to approve the appointments. Second by Cronin. Motion carried 4:0. Attorney Referral. - None End of Month Budget review. - Chief Finke we are on target as far as expenditures, actually running a little under. Our revenue is good, we’re early in the year and I think we might be in the $150,000.00 to the good range. The ambulance crews are very busy. - EMS Division Chief Bechel said we are up 111 calls over this time last year and that’s without Kronenwetter. We’ve had 40 more transfers and 13 more intercepts from this time last year. - Opall said what looks like our next real big purchase? - Chief Finke said the ladder truck, which I’ll talk about it in a minute. E. Staff Reports Report from Fire Chief - Fire Chief Finke said I’ll start with the ladder truck, and I would want to get the input of the Board and the Fiscal Agents. The ladder truck we knew with the current state of the country, on a good year the build of a ladder truck is roughly 9 months, right now that number is closer to 2 years. The ladder truck is scheduled to be purchased in 2023, initially we hadn’t planned on ordering it till February 2023 but then we wouldn’t get it until sometime in 2025. For multiple reasons, one to stay on target with our CIP and two to try and avoid anymore price increases, but I do want to get things moving and maybe try to order this by July or August of this year and lock in a price. Price $1.3 million to $1.5 million, it’s a little difficult to say because the numbers fluctuate. I want to bring back a comprehensive presentation to the Board before I get into too much, but we want to consider going to one ladder truck but then there’s a tradeoff, if we go down to one ladder truck I want to try and add one person onto each shift. I want to bring this back with an actual presentation and hard numbers and descriptions. The other truck is almost 13 years old. - Medicare funding will be going up, hopefully in 2023. I asked LifeQuest, so based upon numbers what kind of a budget impact do you think that will make to us and they said a little over $300,000.00. The downside they said is you’re going to have to work for it, you’ll have a form to fill out. - The last two week myself and Administrative Assistant Latimer have been digging into this Phase 4 HRSA funding for covid relief and we got just over $300,000.00, one that number doesn’t sound right and we were told that is accurate and it was a short conversation. It’s a fairly complex formula and LifeQuest said it’s  possibly accurate. After all the homework that we’ve done, it seems accurate. After we go that figured out, we looked at how we can spend it, some what grey in the way that I read it. There were several different bullet points, but the one said expense for the treatment of, prevention of and response to covid emergencies. Onetime purchase of cardiac monitors and a ventilator and this has to be spent by June of 2023. Cardiac monitors we have in the CIP budget for 2024, so we can take those off and the ventilator we don’t have in the CIP, but we have been using hammy down ventilators since we first got a ventilator. This will take those items off our CIP budget a couple years down the road. Report from Deputy Fire Chief - Deputy Fire Chief Lang said we have an academy right now and we hired six people. Captain Meyers is running the academy, now that I’m moving to the office. We advertised at the Trauma council and we got 1 or 2 from there and most of them were Facebook. - We have an Engineer spot opening up, Engineer Nelson’s last day is the 20th. We offered that to an internal candidate today and is very qualified, been with the department for 3 years, was full time at another department and stayed here during that time and will start in June. We also interviewed for a Captain position that’s replacing my position. We interviewed four internals, we will be making an offer tomorrow and we’ll see how that goes. - The hovercraft will be here next week. - We have a house on NN, we’re going to be burning that down. 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, June 14, 2022 at 18:00 at Village of Weston Municipal Courtroom. - Cronin has nothing. - Langenhahn said as a Board member you should evaluate medical services every once in a while, and I did that last month. The roads are a little rough. Thank you for the good job. - Schaefer said now that we’ve had a quarter of Kronenwetter not being part of us, have they called us at all to do anything? o Chief Finke said no. o Deputy Chief Lang said we just got a phone call from Evergreen Elementary to do a Public Relations event, which I told our PR coordinator to forward them to Kronenwetter’s Fire Chief and Riverside’s Fire Chief. - Opall has nothing. G. Adjourn Motion by Langenhahn to adjourn. Second by Cronin. Motion carried 4:0. Opall adjourned at 19:23