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

OFFICIAL MEETING MINUTES SOUTH AREA FIRE & EMERGENCY RESPONSE DISTRICT Board of Directors Meeting Wednesday, August 10, 2022 @ 17:30 A. Call to Order The meeting of the South Area Fire & Emergency Response District Board of Directors was called to order at 17:30 by SAFER Chairman Mark Maloney. Members Present Board of Directors – Cronin, Langenhahn, Maloney, and Schaefer (via Google Meet) were all present, Opall was absent and excused. Also present: Town of Rib Mountain – Administrator Rhoden and Finance Director Dunbar (via Google Meet); Village of Weston – Director of Finance Trautman; SAFER – Fire Chief Finke, Deputy Fire Chief Lang, EMS Division Chief Bechel, Battalion Chief Lauer 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 July 12, 2022. Motioned by Cronin to approve prior meeting minutes from July 12, 2022. Second by Langenhahn. Motion carried 4:0. Board of Directors approval of expenditures and receipts from July 2022. Motioned by Schaefer to approve expenditures and receipts from July 2022. Second by Cronin. Motion carried 4:0. D. Business Items Discussion and possible action on EMS Bill adjustment. - Chief Finke said we had an ambulance call that involved law enforcement that suffered a minor injury on the call, the EMS crew treated the injury and the law enforcement individual road in the back of the ambulance and was seen at the hospital. - Battalion Chief Lauer said I was on that call and the individual road along for security purposes. - Chief Finke said what happens since he was treated our crew did the correct thing and they wrote a report and when we write a report, the individual received a bill. Then there was a problem when they received the $600.00 - $800.00 ambulance bill and we only bandaged their finger. The individual thought they were working in the back of the ambulance as law enforcement officer and not being transported by the ambulance, and that bill is being disputed. I know we have brought a couple of these in recently and this one is different than the others, but ultimately it is your decision. - Maloney asked would you agree that this officer was there for security? - Battalion Chief Lauer said absolutely, we asked the officer to. - EMS Division Chief Bechel said a report would still have been generated because care was done, but it would’ve been a refusal report. - Battalion Chief Lauer said the officer would’ve self transported per the agency recommending the officer get checked. - Maloney said the officer would’ve driven himself, which would of or wouldn’t have generated a report. - Chief Finke said the officer would’ve received a bill, but it would’ve been a no transport bill, which is less expensive. - Maloney asked how much less? - Chief Finke said a third of the cost. - Cronin asked is the officer disputing the whole bill or asking for a no transport? - Chief Finke said the whole bill. Theoretically, it would get filed under worker’s comp. - Maloney said I can see if we asked for the security, I can see it going to a third. What happens if we asked another firefighter to be there for security, would it be the same thing? Would we give a pass to a firefighter? - Chief Finke said the crew did exactly what they were supposed to do, they gave treatment, so they gave a report just like they’re trained to do even though it was minor. - Schaefer said I would write the whole thing off. - Cronin asked what is your recommendation? - Chief Finke said I would write it off. - Maloney asked I feel you’re the same? - Battalion Chief Lauer said yes, the injury happened before EMS arrived. Action: Motioned by Schaefer to write off the EMS Bill. Second by Cronin. Motion carried 4:0 Discussion and possible action on Wage Study. - Deputy Chief Lang said if you turn to the last two pages of the wage study, I added columns that the Board asked for. Everything not highlighted is what our proposal is and the highlighted is the 25% added to the top that the Board asked for. I don’t know if any action needs to be taken on it, because it would be in the budget proposal. - Maloney asked so this is in the budget? - Deputy Chief Lang said yes, and the action would be whether you want the 15% we proposed or bump it up to the 25% that you asked for? - Chief Finke said the 2023 Budget proposal that we are doing tonight includes the wage proposal that is being made right now. - Schaefer said we should look at how this effects our budget. I appreciate the work that has gone into the wage study, plus we didn’t have to spend $100,000.00 to an outside firm to do this. The amount increase here seems it is bringing it into a range which I think is competitive based on what I’m seeing. I think we’re on the trajectory to answer one of our main problems which is the attraction of quality staff and retention of quality staff and this goes towards that. At least being competitive is the key, and as far as the 25 or 15%, I would stay with the 15%. Whether we can afford it or not is another issue when we talk about the budget. - Chief Finke said when you approve the budget, you’re basically approving the wage study. - Deputy Chief Lang said if we stick with what we have and give 2 – 3% raises or we go to this proposal, it’s a minimal difference. The proposal is a $66,000.00 impact, but 3% on our wages is $66,000.00. - Maloney said I’m fine with approving the wage tonight and taking the anxiety out of it for a month. Action: Motioned by Schaefer to approve the new salary structure. Second by Cronin. Motion carried 4:0. Discussion: Cronin asked are we approving at the 15 or 25%? Schaefer said 15%, sorry I should’ve said that. Action: Amend the motion by Cronin to be at 15%. Second by Schaefer. Motion carried 4:0. Discussion and possible action on COVID sick leave policy. - Chief Finke said we’re still under the policy if one of our employees test positive for covid and are off for X number of days because they’re sick, right now it’s a mandatory 5 days, but if they’re sick for 10 days and had 4 shifts within those 10 days, they’re getting that time paid. I wanted to bring that back and my question to the Board is, do we want to maintain that policy. We are a little bit different because we may have a part time employee that you have to remember gets no benefits at all, they might miss two or three of their shifts and before you know it, they’re missing 48-72 hours and they don’t get paid at all and they don’t have PTO to take, because they’re not offered PTO. I didn’t come up with any kind of specific plan, but I have a couple of  ideas. We can stay the way it is; we could take it away completely and you have to use PTO or for covid related illness you can have 24 hours. There’s lots of different ways to handle this. - Maloney said what is the Town and Village currently doing? - Administrator Rhoden said in our policy what we reference is what the CDC requirements are. - Chief Finke said that’s my question, do we take it away and it can be like any other illness. - Maloney asked is it more rare now? - Chief Finke said we just had an employee that had it. We do the same CDC requirement. - Maloney asked are we seeing proof? Do we see the test? - Chief Finke said we do not require it. We don’t have a solid policy, if somebody comes to work and displays symptoms, they see EMS Division Chief Bechel and she tests them with the tests we have at the fire stations. The last employee that we had was sick during the time they were off and took the test at home and this employee lives an hour away. - Maloney said I think we need to convert like the rest of the groups are doing. - Schaefer said keeping it the way it’s been is the easiest. I’m open to anything though. - Cronin said it’s rare that you could be sick for months at a time, but I struggle with that because if we end up in that situation, we could be paying someone for two months and that gets expensive. I think putting a cap on that would be reasonable. - Chief Finke said the other thing I did think about is for our full-time employees because we have PTO, you have to use your PTO and for our part-time employees who don’t have PTO for a covid related illness, you get up to 72 hours of paid time off. - Deputy Chief Lang said just for covid only, because our current policy is we have to use our first 72 hours out of our PTO, and then we can go to our medical leave bank. Maybe for covid only, you can use it up front from your medical leave bank for full-time. Action: Motioned by Cronin to keep the covid policy as it stands, but cap for part-time at 72 hours of paid time off and for full-time can use their medical leave bank immediately. Second by Schaefer. Motion carried 4:0. Discussion and possible action on Engine Response. - Chief Finke said this is something that is enclosed in the budget presentation, this is more of an operational change, but I wanted to get the Board’s input on this. Right now, we have seven people on duty, we’ll go down to a minimum of six. If we have three consecutive ambulance calls, which happens somewhat frequently, we’ll send all three ambulances out. The problem is with all three ambulances out, that means we have nobody left. If there is a fire, whether it’s in the Village or the Town or the Town of Marathon, Town of Weston or the Town of Stettin, you’re not getting a fire response from us at all. I would propose that we drop to two ambulances that are staffed and then we staff an engine, and if we would get triple tapped with three consecutive ambulance calls, the engine would respond to the ambulance call, they would have a paramedic on the truck and they’ll have equipment on the truck so they can at least start to provide care and then we would have to call mutual aid ambulance to do a transport. - Schaefer said let’s walk through our staffing right now, because I’m confused about that. We have two stations, and we have staff there and what is everyone’s working hours there at those stations? You mentioned three shifts, where do they all work? - Chief Finke said three shifts cover the different days. Actually, can we jump to the budget and then circle back to this maybe? We have three crews and we refer to them as red shift, blue shift and green shift. One crew works every day and we do a California style rotation which means they work a day, off a day, work a day, off a day, work a day and off four days and the rotation starts over again. There’s always a Battalion Chief on and always a Captain on. The Battalion Chief runs this station here in Weston and the Captain runs the station in Rib Mountain, those are both full-time positions and we have three of each. Then we have four full-time engineers that run the trucks and respond to ambulance calls with the goal to try and get to six so we have one of them at each station at all times. Then we have majority time employees which are full-time employees that work the same 24-hour shift rotation, the only thing different for them is they do not get their full pay overnight, from 11pm to 8am they get $12.00/hour instead of their normal hourly wage and they do not get health insurance. Then we have POC’s, some may work 16 or 20 hours a month, some may  work 24-48 hours a week. Then we have our interfacility staff which only cover interfacility, they’re never on duty, they come in off duty to cover transfers whenever their available. - Schaefer asked do any of those people pick up a POC shift? - Chief Finke said it’s very rare, the way we have it set up is if we have an open shift and nobody else will pick up and they want to pick it up, they’re allowed to and that has only happened five or six times over the last year. - Deputy Chief Lang said the biggest issue with that is the IFT staff is medical only, they can’t be on a fire truck. - Chief Finke said if we skip to the next page current staffing, we have three crews, one is always on duty. Red shift has a Battalion Chief, Captain, two Engineers, two Majority Time and one POC for total staffing of seven. Green shift is basically the same, except they only have one full-time Engineer with three Majority Time plus one POC for total staffing of seven. Blue shift, we have four Majority Time, one Engineer and one POC for total staffing of eight. It was the hope that we could get our staffing up to eight, we were able to get one shift up to eight last year. That’s the way we work right now. When we’re at full staffing of seven, we have three people at station 1 and four people here in Weston. The crew that works with the total of eight, we have five people here in Weston and we still maintain the three in Rib Mountain. The goal is to try to get the Battalion Chief to be a true Battalion Chief where they don’t have to be on the ambulance and if there is an issue they have to deal with, they’re available to go to the vehicle crash, they’re available to go to the fire, they’re available to respond to the cardiac arrest. The calls that we want our senior, most experienced person that runs the shift on. Which is typically how fire departments are run. - Maloney said we’re talking about a three-call event, what if a fourth call comes in? - Chief Finke said if the fourth call comes in, we’re always calling mutual aid. - Maloney asked how many times does three calls happen? - Chief Finke said about three to four times a month. - Maloney said Schaefer, is your question when that happens, who is left in the station? Is that where you’re going? - Schaefer said we used to have roll up, but no ones left to roll up anymore I have a feeling. - Deputy Chief Lang said no one rolls up, they can, but they don’t. - Chief Finke said occasionally if it’s during the day, Captain Stieve will come in. - Battalion Chief Lauer said the biggest issue I see is at night and weekends when we’re not going to get anyone for those types of calls. - Maloney said then we’re calling somebody else. - Chief Finke said correct. - Schaefer said we’re going to forego the income on that third call, because we’re rolling paramedics but we’re not going to be able to charge for that on an engine. - Chief Finke said that’s correct. My concern is I realize the risk is somewhat minimal. - Battalion Chief Lauer said if we are on a long-haul transfer, that also reduces our staff and we increase that risk that much more. - Cronin asked do we take people on shift to take an interfacility transfer? - Chief Finke said frequently. From a staffing standpoint, does everybody know where we’re at? - Board said yes. - Chief Finke said we run stretched thin with an average of ten to eleven calls per day between fire and EMS, during the day it’s not as bad during the week because myself, Deputy Chief Lang and EMS Division Chief Bechel are in the office, but at nights and weekends we’re not. I have concerns when we’re triple tapped and the stations are empty. It did happen early spring, because I came in from home, there was a fire at an apartment and all three ambulances were out and I was the only one coming and then Deputy Chief Lang came in. - Maloney asked why is this at this level, wouldn’t this be at your level? - Chief Finke said I did say that and that’s what I led with, but it will have an impact on the budget. We could lose between 30 – 40 ambulance calls a year; it has an impact on the service that we deliver to both communities. - Cronin asked would getting us to eight on each shift help solve this problem? - Chief Finke said yes. Action: No action taken. Presentation of 2023 Budget. - Chief Finke said we already went through some of this, but let’s start from the top. Looking at 2022 quick; • Projected expenses I’m estimating we’ll be over budget by $25,000.00 to $30,000.00. Fuel prices, I’m sure everyone understands that, utility costs for natural gas and increased costs for EMS supplies will make us over budget by a little bit. • Projected revenue of $1,468,466.00 is the number that came from LifeQuest and I think that’s a little conservative from the numbers we see right now. That puts us almost $300,000.00 over for budgeted revenue and we have about $25,000.00 in sales of equipment that we didn’t have in the budget revenue. • Challenges that not just the fire service is facing, but basically everybody, there’s a little bit of inflation which is really difficult for the public sector. The labor market is difficult to hire employees, then we have increased call volume and we lost Kronenwetter and less area to respond to, but our call volume is right on pace with where we were last year. Decreased off duty response I’d say is basically nothing at this point. Staffing levels are fairly low and we talked about the engine company we currently do not have. • Our current staff I’m not going to go through that again unless anybody has questions. • Current staffing, we talked about that already. • Notable changes, we increased the EMS revenue from $1,175,000.00 to $1,250,000.00 and I’m being extremely conservative on that. We’re on pace for $1,468,466.00 for this year and we shouldn’t have an issue reaching that next year again, the concern I have is if we go to interfacility transfers have been somewhat a hot topic over the last couple years. We’re doing more which is good and it’s bad because we are doing a lot of them with on-duty staff, so we’re pulling two people off the shift of the crew that already ran four or five 9-1-1 calls at 10:00pm from Park Falls to Eau Claire and get back at 4:00am and then they get an EMS call at 4:30am, so they’re up their whole entire 24-hour shift. Which isn’t so bad if that happens once in a while, but it’s happening somewhat frequently and I don’t see that changing. It’s good for revenue, it’s a little bit rough on the crews. Myself, Deputy Chief Lang and EMS Division Chief Bechel met with the Battalion Chiefs and Captains because they run the shifts. Traditionally what we have done is if a transfer comes in, basically you’re taking it. We had a three-hour meeting and at the end it’s up to the Battalion Chiefs. The reason why I’m being a bit tight with my projection is because I don’t know how that’s going to go yet. Increase hourly wages by making two Majority Time employees full time employees, which will decrease the part time wages and it includes the raises that we talked about with the wage study. Increased WRS by $30,000.00. Health insurance increase, that is for the two full time people assuming they are going to take health insurance. Increased fuel for obvious reasons. • 2023 staffing plan what is in the budget today is each shift will be exactly the same, a Battalion Chief, Captain, two full time Engineers, two majority time employees and one POC each day for a total of seven. Blue shift we’re cutting from eight to seven. • Reducing from 3 to 2 EMS crews that we already talked about, and it has some data in there incase anyone is interested in how many fire and rescue incidents we responded to already this year. • 2023 staffing option when we look at our call volume EMS wise about 70% of our EMS calls everyday happen between 9am and 9pm. We looked at fire response, and fire is a tighter window of noon to 6pm. If we added one twelve-hour person on each shift from the 9am to 9pm to help cover interfacility transfers that would add about $90,000.00 in wages and benefits. Then we could staff the three ambulances at peak call times, we can cover interfacility transfers, we can rotate some of the IFT staff. We could consider hiring the paramedic only people to cover the shift. The other part that plays into this a little bit, there is a very high potential that Medicare funding will be increased in 2023. I’m going to a meeting in November and I hope I can get a little more clarity on that, and if that happens, we would have plenty of money for staffing. That would easily add $250,000.00 to our revenue. I have not put any of that potential revenue into the budget. • Future staffing and the real goal to try and get to is a staff of nine so we could have the three ambulances, an adequate fire response. We obviously know it’s going to take some time, but that’s what we have to strive for. We’re not getting any slower, the complexity of our calls is getting higher.  - Schaefer said the additional staffing at $90,000.00 is not in the budget at this point. - Chief Finke said that is correct. - Cronin asked is there a way that we can track the transfers so we have a number of how many we’re turning down? What I would like to know is, how many did we turn down, were they in town, were they out of town, were they ALS, were they BLS. - Chief Finke said in towns we never turndown. What if we take the budget back, because I want to fine tune a couple things. I will put the eighth person in for the twelve hours, I’ll adjust the revenue and bring it back to the next meeting? - Board all said yes. Action: No action taken. Attorney Referral. - None End of Month Budget review. - Chief Finke asked any questions on the budget review? E. Staff Reports Report from Fire Chief - Fire Chief Finke said we did have an extremely unfortunate event for one of our Engineer/Paramedics who has been with us for several years, their son had passed away Saturday morning. We’re working with the family and talking to them daily. We have been working on a Chaplain program which is part of our strategic plan, we were struggling to find one and Wausau Fire has three. I contacted Chief Barteck and asked if I could borrow one of his Chaplains and he did. Report from Deputy Fire Chief - Deputy Fire Chief Lang • Personnel report: We have three firefighters starting paramedic in August. We have three firefighters coming off of probation this month, so we will have a badge pinning in September or October. • EMS: We had 279 calls in July, 183 where 911, 50 IFT, 12 intercept, 4 mutual aid and 8 standbys. • Fire: 37 calls in July. • Training: 156+ hours of combined training. • Apparatus: Fire Prevention/Inspection vehicle the wrap has been done on it. We bought a used F- 150, in the budget is a new F-150 and the price increased $10,000.00 on the one that we had ordered. • Fire Prevention: 3 tours/activities. • Grants and Projects: We put in for a grant and we’re still waiting on whether or not we’re getting EMS grant. 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, September 13, 2022 at 17:30 at Village of Weston Municipal Courtroom. - Ordinance for traffic crashes. - Cronin has nothing. - Langenhahn has nothing. - Schaefer has nothing. - Maloney has nothing. G. Adjourn Motion by Langenhahn to adjourn. Second by Cronin. Motion carried 4:0. Maloney adjourned at 19:12