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

OFFICIAL MEETING MINUTES SOUTH AREA FIRE & EMERGENCY RESPONSE DISTRICT Board of Directors Meeting Monday, September 26, 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 18:06 by SAFER Chairman Mark Maloney. Members Present Board of Directors – Cronin, Langenhahn, Maloney, Schaefer and Opall (* arrived at 18:18) were all present. 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, Battalion Chief Lauer, Lieutenant Zellner (via Google Meet), Engineer Breit (via Google Meet), Engineer Chula 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 August 10, 2022 and approval of expenditures and receipts from August 2022. Motioned by Schaefer to approve prior meeting minutes from August 10, 2022 and expenditures and receipts from August 2022. Second by Cronin. Motion carried 4:0. D. Business Items Discussion and possible action on 2023 Operational Budget and Capital. - Maloney said we will pass this and wait for Opall. Update on ordinance for traffic crashes. - Chief Finke said that was sent out to Opall, Maloney, Rhoden and Donner. We have an ordinance for traffic crashes done and they differ a bit between the Town and Village because of State laws. I don’t know that this Board needs to make an approval on those, it’s obviously for the Town and Village to do. It sounds like Rhoden has it tentatively on the Public Safety Committee meeting I do believe and Donner is going to get it into Weston also. The one thing VanderWaal added was we spoke about car fires and electric vehicles fires with the prolong time that they may take and the prolong resources, so we may have a discussion down the road about maybe a special assessment for electric car fires. Normally a car fire we take one engine and a tender and we’re there for 30-45 minutes, with the electric cars it maybe the whole crew with multiple vehicles for a longer time. - Maloney said if we had data on that. - Chief Finke said there is and they’ve done testing already. - Maloney said I don’t think we should wait; we should get ahead of it. - Chief Finke said I have no idea what those numbers are, is it $100.00 or $500.00. - Schaefer asked what is the ordinance say on regular car fires that we charge? - Chief Finke said there’s no numbers in there. - Maloney asked are we going to have a charge for those also? - Chief Finke said we can, the initial talk was crashes and we have vehicle crashes and fires. What I had in mind was the electric vehicle fires and we can do regular vehicle fires also. - Deputy Chief Lang said an electric vehicle fire recommendation is we have to first put it out, then we’re supposed to stay there for an hour to make sure it doesn’t rekindle before we can allow it to be towed. When we talk about resources, we could potentially have to pull a box alarm in order to put out an electric car fire because of the amount of water you need. - Schaefer asked is the ordinance going to set the fee? - Chief Finke said no, the fee will be set by each municipality’s fee schedule. - Schaefer said we will be consistent between Weston and Rib Mountain. We’ll pass it and recommend a fee for the different categories and we can always change our fee schedules. - Chief Finke said at this point I’m waiting on each municipality to move it forward through their system. Discussion and possible action on purchase of UTV and Fire/Rescue Skid. - Chief Finke said the state had flex grants available for the money Mr. Evers was making his rounds about. We put in a grant for a UTV, the UTV in Rib Mountain is fairly old and we did have in the CIP budget for a couple years from now. The state funded at 46% of what we asked for. - EMS Division Chief Bechel said the way the grant was written you had to put in there what you needed specifically, how much it cost and why you needed it. - Deputy Chief Lang said you have a very short time to spend the money, it needs to be spent by February. - EMS Division Chief Bechel said I have not officially accepted the grant yet. - Maloney asked what is the cost of the UTV and Fire Skid? - Chief Finke said $40,839.00. - *Opall arrived. - Chief Finke said there is a UTV available to be purchased, it’ll be the exact same one that is here (Weston) and they will start building the skid for us. - Maloney asked from where? - Chief Finke said the UTV will come from Benson’s Hardware in Frederic and the skid comes from EJ Metals in New London. Action: Motioned by Cronin to use the remaining capital funds from FY2022 to cover the remaining amount for the UTV and Skid and to accept the grant. Second by Schaefer. Motion carried 5:0. Review and possible action on approved 2023 Wage Scale. - Deputy Chief Lang said when we put out the wage scale, I had a typo in there with two numbers switched around for the Engineer. It’ll be about a $5,000.00 impact in the budget. - Schaefer said we have nothing to approve in front of us. - Chief Finke said we can bring it back next time. - Schaefer said bring back the wage scale and then we can approve the wage scale. Action: No action taken. Discussion and possible action on stipend in lieu of Health Insurance. - Chief Finke said I wanted to bring this up for conversation, I do not have specific numbers as of yet. I wanted to get direction from the Board first to see if there was any possibility of this before I put a ton of work into it. We brought this up before and I know Opall and Langenhahn where definitely on the Board then. For employees that are not on the fire district’s health insurance would get a stipend as an encouragement for them to take health insurance from a spouse. I have randomly asked a handful of employees who are on our health insurance, if we did this, would you go off. There was one employee who said yes that would probably make me change. - Cronin said I would be ok with exploring it, do you want to bring some numbers back? Action: No action taken. Discussion and possible action on Ambulance Bill Adjustment. - Chief Finke said this is a patient that was assaulted and is requesting to have 50% of the bill written off and the current bill is $425.00 for no transport. Our billing company is recommending that we adjust by the  $212.50 leaving the patient with the same balance. The patient’s average annual earnings are only $29,000.00 and according to the poverty guidelines, they qualify for the 50% reduction of their bill. Action: Motioned by Opall to adjust the bill to 50%. Second by Cronin. Motion carried 5:0. Attorney Referral. - None End of Month Budget review. - None Discussion and possible action on 2023 Operational Budget and Capital. - Chief Finke said the only significant change since we spoke last was, I did raise up the insurance lines of Public Liability went up by $4,000.00 and the Vehicles/Equipment went up by $6,000.00. I do not have firm numbers from the insurance agents and I did go out for bid on three different companies and I don’t have anything back yet. There was some recommendation last meeting to increase the revenue to make it a zero increase for the municipalities and I did not do it that aggressively, so the levy increases $57,831.90. The other fairly significant change I made since last time was Gasoline went up by $30,000.00. - Cronin said on line 513 Insurance-Public Liability, why is that so high? - Deputy Chief Lang said that is one of the insurance lines that got raised up. - Schaefer said the raises, fuel, insurance, etc. and adding that person on shifts is good, 3% overall increase on the operations is nice to see. - Deputy Chief Lang said if you look at line 346, our clothing allowance we break down for each full-time employee. Can we eliminate that and have one line? We keep tracked of that on our end for everybody’s individual allowance and when they go over their allowance, we take it out of their paycheck. It would make it cleaner to have one line and that particular budget line is never correct. The spreadsheet I have is accurate. - Cronin said one line that says uniforms as long as you’re keeping track on your end. Action: Motioned by Cronin to approve the 2023 Operational Budget and Capital along with the changes to the budget for the uniforms for next year. Second by Opall. Motion carried 5:0. E. Staff Reports Report from Fire Chief - Fire Chief Finke said we are doing a training burn on Thursday on Birch Street starting around 8:00am. - In regards to apparatus, we have our Heavy Rescue truck that is out of service for probably a week. There’s a fairly significant crack in the body which is a little concerning, so it’s back at the manufacture and it is under warranty. - We have room in the budget and we’re sending in all the vehicles in, except for the ones that we’re getting rid of in the next year or two. We’re sending them to a place in Wausau called Death Grip Motor Sports where they do this Krown vehicle undercoating. I’ve done this to my personal vehicles the last couple of years and it’s a rust preventative that gets applied every year. We can spray the trucks and hopefully cut down on the corrosion and some repairs. Report from Deputy Fire Chief - Deputy Fire Chief Lang said the August report is in your packet. - Personnel report: Captain Zellner took a volunteer demotion to Lieutenant, a part of his promotion to Captain was completing Paramedic and no fault to his own, the way the Paramedic program is being taught it is almost near impossible for a full-time employee to complete it. o Chief Finke said the delivery of the class, Lieutenant Zellner like lots of firefighters and myself are an in person, talking back and forth and hands on type of learner and this was not. A good portion was online and they had to go home and watch videos of the instructor talking through a lecture. - FF Ewan, FF Isakson and FF Robinson completed probation and we’re going to have a badge pinning November 15th tentatively and we’re going to be sending out invites for that. We apologize for not sending out invites to the last one. - EMS Calls for Service: 252 calls, the breakdown is there.  - Fire Calls for Service: 32 calls. - Training: We’re really happy with the Battalion Chiefs and Captains and especially Battalion Chief Genrich and his leadership with training. We had two structures, the training burn and the Taphouse that we trained in. - Apparatus: Nothing to report. - Fire Prevention/Public Education: The Open House was a success and DCE football is starting up and we will be there on Fridays. - Grants/Projects: The Flex grant we talked about and we’re still waiting to hear on the DNR 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 Wednesday, November 16, 2022 at 17:30 at SAFER Station 1. - Cronin said I’m not going to be here the first two weeks in November, so everybody knows. - Langenhahn has nothing. - Opall said I got a call about a month ago Village of Maine President Hoenisch, did she call anybody else? o Chief Finke said yes, I’ve talked to President Hoenisch twice. - Schaefer has nothing. - Maloney has nothing. G. Adjourn Motion by Opall to adjourn. Second by Langenhahn. Motion carried 5:0. Maloney adjourned at 19:12