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

OFFICIAL MEETING MINUTES SOUTH AREA FIRE & EMERGENCY RESPONSE DISTRICT Board of Directors Meeting Tuesday, July 11, 2023 @ 17:30 A. Call to Order The meeting of the South Area Fire & Emergency Response District Board of Directors was called to order at 17:33 by SAFER Chairman Mark Maloney. Members Present Board of Directors – Cronin, Langenhahn, Maloney and Opall were all present, Schaefer was absent and excused. Also present: Town of Rib Mountain – Finance Director Dunbar and Community Development Director Grande; SAFER – Fire Chief Finke, Deputy Fire Chief Lang, Battalion Chief Genrich (via Zoom), Captain Lohman (via Zoom), Lieutenant Zellner (via Zoom), Engineer Riesterer (via Zoom), Firefighter Kolb (via Zoom), Firefighter Stanchik (via Zoom), Probationary Firefighter Wolfgram (via Zoom) and Administrative Assistant Latimer. Two guests (via Zoom). 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 June 13, 2023, and approval of expenditures and receipts from June 2023. Motioned by Opall to approve prior meeting minutes from June 13, 2023, and expenditures and receipts from June 2023. Second by Cronin. Motion carried 4:0. D. Business Items Discussion and possible action on Therapy Dog. - Chief Finke said this is something we’ve been talking about for a couple years and it’s finally worked its way up to the top of the pile. I know the Village is a little bit familiar with this because EMPD has a Therapy Dog, but it’s primarily used in the schools. This is something that is popular in law enforcement and it’s gaining more traction in fire and EMS especially in the last five to seven years and within the last couple of years there’s been more fire departments in the state that have obtained a dog. We started doing a little research into it and at this point what I’m asking for tonight is support from the Board to move ahead and continue looking into it, we’ve done some basic groundwork already, I took a short class when I went to the WEMSA Conference in February and both Deputy Chief Lang and Administrative Assistant Latimer went to a short class at the Fire Chiefs’ Conference a couple weeks ago to get some more background information on how programs work. The one that I went to was a program from a large EMS system near the Twin Cities and for Deputy Chief Lang and Administrative Assistant Latimer it was Milwaukee PD, some of the information I was told was 180 degrees different from the information they were told as far as how to run the program and how the dog’s work. The two big factors we really need to figure out would be who is going to be the handler or handlers of the dog and veterinary care and how that gets funded. The program I took and the system near the Twin Cities, they don’t ask for any donations, they fund it through their budget which is a hospital- based system and they have lots of money. The Milwaukee PD dog has a local dog food vendor Fromm that  supplies them with all of their food and a local vet donates 100% of the veterinary care, so the cost for them to have the dog is basically zero. The dog itself we can get for free, which is trained for that. - Maloney asked training for what? - Chief Finke said it’s not an emotional support, they call it a facility dog. - Maloney said it’s not a K9, EMPD type training drug dog. So, it’s a comfort dog for here. - Chief Finke said it’s going to float back and forth. One of the differences from the class that I took, they have two or three dogs and each dog has two or three handlers and the class they took they said no you can’t do that. The purpose of the dog is it comes in on a daily basis and the really important purpose is we have a traumatic incident, the dog comes in. We have four people going to Critical Incident Stress Management training that’s grant funded in August for three days and they will be certified CISM Therapists, we’re maybe going to have one of those in line with the dog. - Maloney said you’d entered the dog into the equation, not here, but at someone’s home. - Chief Finke said no, it’s here. - Deputy Chief Lang said it’s mostly here and you could use it in the home too, but it’s mostly here for our people. - Cronin said but the handlers would be able to take them home. - Maloney asked is it mostly or is it all employee related? - Chief Finke said employee related, not to say if someone comes through on a fieldtrip they can hang out with the dog. - Cronin asked what happens if the person or handler you have decides to leave the department? - Chief Finke said the dog stays and this is something we would have to work through with Attorney VanderWaal and I could talk with Police Chief Schultz and see how they do that. - Deputy Chief Lang said we will be very selective and we’ve already talked about who the handler would be. The therapy dog opens up somebody’s ability to start talking to you and the handler needs to be a peer support person and the dog and the peer support go hand in hand. - Chief Finke said I’m a dog lover and I have two dogs, the big factor that kicked me into moving it forward is I had to take my dogs to the vet a few months ago and we had a PALS class here that I had to be at that night and didn’t have enough time to take them home, so the dogs went to class with me and at the end of the class after everyone was playing with the dogs our Captain asked if we could have roving basset hounds for every class from now on? They’re proven to have a benefit and the big thing is the cost thing and I thought maybe the other thing that might come up is the Village of Weston people may be more comfortable than the Town of Rib Mountain people just because the Village is more used to it with EMPD is the liability and if someone gets bit, obviously there are breeds that are selected. From my group they said you have to get a doodle because it’s hypoallergenic and it doesn’t shed on our navy pants and the group they went to said no, you have to get a purebred dog. - Deputy Chief Lang said they said that a doodle it could take on traits of the poodle or the mix and they’re a little bit more unpredictable. - Chief Finke said the group that I’ve been looking at will donate the dog have a lot of labs, golden retriever is a big one and a newfoundland and they pick the dogs that tend to have a calm temperament and I did reach out to our insurance company and asked them how that would work and we already have coverage, so if something would happen like a bite or injury, we already have coverage for that and on top of that we have a $25,000.00 replacement to purchase another dog if we would have to. - Maloney asked what is the ballpark on the dog? - Chief Finke said cost wise between $8,000.00-12,000.00, but again we would get it donated. This agency takes in donations from all over and they train these dogs and they put them up for availability for fire and police departments. I think for food, treats and toys I’m sure we can get funding from the public at our open house, the big thing is the vet. - Dunbar asked have you reached out to any veterinary clinics to see what they could do? - Chief Finke said not yet. - Deputy Chief Lang said one of our Captains, his wife is a vet and he suggested that there might be some potential with the clinic she works at that most of the vet could potentially be donated. - Maloney said where does she work if I may ask? - Deputy Chief Lang said she has ties with Kronenwetter Vet right now. She works there part-time. The Milwaukee PD program they really struggled with a vet and a friend said they’ll sponsor the dog, and as soon as they got the dog inhouse and working and did a social media campaign, he said he gets calls from vets every week that want to donate. - Chief Finke said to the best of my knowledge all the K9’s in the county whether it’s EMPD, County they go to PAW Health in Kronenwetter that’s open 24 hours. I wanted to talk to Board about this before I got too far ahead. Action: No action needed. Discussion and possible action on Building Inspector. - Chief Finke said so I’m guessing this is why Grande is here tonight, this came up recently and I’ll let him talk about it. - Grande said for those of you who don’t know, Building Inspector/Assistant Zoning Administrator Kufahl’s last day was June 28th and right now he’s helping us part-time on Tuesday and Thursday in the evening for inspections and virtual planning review. I’m working with the Village of Weston on possibly contracting and we did post for the position and in the process the Village of Weston and the City of Wausau have not found anyone with the credentials. - Maloney said Tatro who’s on the Fire Commission, we’re contracting with him and I think Wausau might be done now, but our Board would definitely want to go together. If you only wanted to do half, we would possibly do the other half. Are you trying to help out with Fire Marshal Christiansen? - Opall said this is for the Town. - Grande said this is for residential, we contract for commercial with Wausau. Even with Wausau and Weston, I’ve been talking with Building Inspector/Building Manager Maguire and hired someone from the private sector and they’re working on getting their credentials, the issue with that is scheduling to take the exam and get your credentials, October is the earliest and you need four credentials to do all the inspections for residential. Kufahl was able when he came on board in 2015 to get all four within six months, which is unheard of. Right now, we’re looking at all options to see what we potentially can do to go forward, but we are posting for the position and I talked with Chief Finke to say there’s some communities that I heard talked to Kufahl previously that fire departments take on similar inspections so I sent it to Chief Finke to see if there’s any interest at all and it sounds like there’s somethings that he’s reviewing for organizational purposes and there might be some options there. - Chief Finke said based upon that discussion about what the feelings are, we do need some help for Fire Marshal Christiansen, and this would be a perfect opportunity for that fire inspections and building inspections play hand in hand. We don’t have anybody internally that has those credentials as it sits today either, I did send an email out to the entire department and asked if there would be any interest and I had one person that gave me a little bit of interest verbally, he’s never been a contractor, but does build as a hobby on the side. We do have one other employee who’s a brand-new employee and apparently did have his contractor’s license, but he let is lapse and he doesn’t have any inspection licenses but said for him it would be fairly easy to do and did have some interest in it. We don’t have anybody that would be able to hit the ground running either. Maybe somebody from the smaller municipalities if we had someone, we could contract out to do that, it may not be just the Town. I’m looking for a little direction on how the Board wants to handle that or how the Board feels about it. - Opall said the question that I have is since it’s so hard to find these qualified people for inspections, does that leave the fire department on the hook for not fulfilling their obligation to do inspections? - Chief Finke said if we don’t do fire inspections. - Deputy Chief Lang said our obligation for inspections we do is very different. - Opall said even at that, if you don’t have the qualified person and something happens. - Deputy Chief Lang said per State Statutes our qualified inspector is a person the Chief says is the qualified inspector. We all have taken classes and we have state certifications. - Chief Finke said the people that do our fire inspections for the district are state certified fire inspectors. - Grande said right now for helping us out in the short term, we’re trying to find something long term and even as I’m posting for the position, I’m anticipating not getting somebody with all the credentials due to what Wausau and Weston went through. - Maloney said so you’re talking to dovetail the inspector, also for the Town and also to help Fire Marshal Christiansen too, right? - Chief Finke said when I talked with Grande and they’re looking at lots of options, but the consideration was that it would be a SAFER Fire department employee and when they had inspection work that needed to be done, we would basically charge the Town a contracted rate. - Grande said you’ve got other communities that at some point are going to be at the same crossroads that we’re at right now. - Chief Finke said I’m looking for direction from the Board on how we want to move forward. It’s a tough one to handle, do we consider posting a position? - Maloney said what you’re posting for is for you to say is a qualified inspector. - Chief Finke said I don’t have a budget to hire a full-time fire inspector. - Maloney said I know, but anybody that Grande hires that needs to be qualified, where you just get to say Deputy Chief Lang, you’re the inspector. - Deputy Chief Lang said no, but we would hire an inspector and we would write the job description as a full- time inspector that would work under Fire Marshal Christiansen, but part of the job description is they would have to get qualified to be a building inspector on the residential side. - Maloney said technically right now we could work together and have Building Inspector Meverden, Maguire and Tatro and they could help out Fire Marshal Christiansen especially if we have to have a rush to get some stuff done. Then still have him on the other side for the Town side. - Dunbar said what we’re after right now is, is this an option that this Board is interested in, so when we go provide options to the Village (of Rib Mountain) that we are working this out. It will take some time to work it out, do you have interest in that collaboration? - Maloney said yes, if the finance side says yes, done. - Chief Finke said I have a need for another fire inspector, but I can tell you that we don’t have 40 hours a week of need for another fire inspector. Last year we had retired firefighter Stieve working temporarily for us doing inspections and would work 10-15 hours a week and stayed busy for those hours. We could probably use 15- 20 hours a week because we should get a little more preplan activities done. - Dunbar said one of the ideas is you could contract out and you could be the potential source for contracting to be able to give that employee full-time and help cover some of the payroll. - Cronin asked could you hire some that’s EMS certified as well, so if they’re not meeting 40 hours a week, they could work a shift? - Deputy Chief Lang said they could, but with everything you all are talking about with contracting to multiple communities, Kufahl was busy. - Chief Finke said to me this position is a Fire Inspector/Building Inspector. - Deputy Chief Lang said we have at least 20 hours a week of fire inspections and it sounds like the Village (of Rib Mountain) has at least 20 hours a week of residential building inspections. - Grande said on July 18th, I’ll be presenting to our Board about these options and Kufahl was not only doing residential inspections, he was also facility manager, assistant zoning administrator. Depending on what route we go, trying to have it all on the table and what options we have and to Dunbar’s point, is this something the Board here is interested in kind of like your first item before this, then we know to continue to move forward on or do we just kind of seize going down this path and pivot elsewhere? - Opall said rather than making a motion, we’re just giving both staffs to continue to talk and find something that might work. - Chief Finke said when you have such a small staff when the Town did and the Village, when one person leaves it really puts you in a bind, if you can work together a little bit more and have two to four people, that way when one person leaves it doesn’t put you in the bind. Action: No action taken. Attorney Referral. - None End of Month Budget review.  - Chief Finke said the up-to-date budget is in there, and everything is looking really good. If anyone has any questions, we are running about $125,000.00 ahead as of today, we got the deposit yesterday for EMS revenue. We’re right were we need to be. E. Staff Reports Report from Fire Chief - Fire Chief Finke said in regards to the ambulance, I just received an email from our rep yesterday. Originally, they told us September that it would be ready to go, but now the projected date is August 3rd about three weeks away. When it comes here, we have to take the power load system that’s in our current ambulance transferred over. Then graphics and those types of things, it should be on the road by the middle of August. - I know we did a presentation on staffing two or three months ago, the one thing that wasn’t in there a lot was budgetary stuff as far as how much it’s actually going to cost, so I plan to have a presentation for that at our next Board meeting with a preliminary idea of what I’m planning on sticking in the budget for next year. We had some brief discussions with Trautman and Dunbar about that last Thursday. Report from Deputy Fire Chief - Deputy Fire Chief Lang said the report is in your packet and I’ll give you the highlights. - Personnel report: We posted the EMS coordinator position, we haven’t had any applicants yet, but we did have a couple people that asked us about it when EMS Division Chief Bechel first resigned and thought they were interested. I think we’ll get an application or two and will be posted for the next 10 to 14 days. In the meantime, we have two staff that are doing specific job duties. - We’re going to be doing another hiring in mid-August, when I was at convention, one of the presentations that I was in was from a PhD psychologist whose talking about psychological evals and how departments can be held liable for improper hiring practices if they don’t do them if things happen with employees. It’s always been in our job descriptions that you might potentially have a psychological evaluation. We talked with the psychologist and had a meeting with him last week and is out of Delafield and can do it mostly virtually, so we give a written exam here that’s kind of proctored and his one on one is virtually and we have the system to do that now, and he charges about $500.00 per person. This can significantly help us from a liability standpoint, there are departments that have paid out 6-7 figure settlements because an employee was fired for various reasons and then sued the department saying that they were hired improperly and won. The discussion is that we were going to start doing that with this round of hiring, now we’re going to be putting about $1,000.00 per person to hire them, so we’re going to be much more selective. - EMS & Fire Incidents: EMS and fire responses, the graphs are there. EMS response is holding steady for total volume for the month, we were a little bit up from last year. Interfacility transports were really good in June as well. Fire responses are there, we had a mutual aid fire to Mosinee at Crystal Finishing by the airport, a small grass fire off of County Road NN that was less than an acre, we had a fire in Weston that we talked about the last meeting, we had a mutual aid fire in Mosinee at an apartment, we had a structure fire at Walmart in one of their meat coolers. o Cronin said I didn’t see it listed, there was a significant save at the aquatic center too, correct? o Chief Finke said I was personally not there; I was out of town. Yes, there was a near drowning. - Training: Training hours are listed. - Apparatus: We talked about the Osage ambulance that we bought. The Pierce truck was confirmed with delivery of fall 2024. - Fire Prevention/Public Education: We’ve been fairly busy with fire prevention, one of the things that we’ve been doing and this was our second year, the Wausau Local Union has an MDA fundraiser at all the Culver’s in town at Rothschild, Rib Mountain and Wausau we also go to Rib Mountain to help fundraising and any fundraising we would do we give back. - Grants/Projects: WPS grant we applied for two 4-gas meters. DNR grant is a 50/50 match and this year we’re asking for 50 more hoods so everybody has two hoods and tracks for a UTV and miscellaneous equipment. o Cronin asked what are drip torches?  o Deputy Chief Lang said it’s a diesel and kerosene mix tank. You light it on fire and drips fire. When we did the grass burn in the Town of Marathon, we used it to decrease the chance of a wild fire, it’s a control burn and training for us. o Chief Finke said they’ll use them on a very large wild fire, they’ll do it to burn out an area so the fire moving towards that way can’t continue to burn. 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 TBD. - Cronin said can we have a discussion on Brycer next month? - Langenhahn has nothing. - Opall has nothing. - Maloney said I don’t want to lose track on the hydrant for the Greenheck Turner (Community Center), if you say we need a hydrant, that’s it. We need to come down on that hard, you are the Chief and if you say there’s going to be a hydrant there, that’s it. I understand the whole school side, but as a municipality we have to do the right thing and you’ll have our complete support on it. We don’t want to push this back on the school, if the school says yes or no that’s up to them, but if our SAFER entity says it is, that’s done. Now as a municipality we now pay. o Cronin said it doesn’t hit you until you get there, because I drove it. It doesn’t look that far from an overhead view, but when you get there that’s a problem. G. Adjourn Motion by Opall to adjourn. Second by Langenhahn. Motion carried 4:0. Maloney adjourned at 18:30