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

OFFICIAL MEETING MINUTES SOUTH AREA FIRE & EMERGENCY RESPONSE DISTRICT Board of Directors Meeting Tuesday, August 22, 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 17:30 by SAFER Chairman Mark Maloney. Members Present Board of Directors – Cronin, Langenhahn, Maloney, Opall (*excused at 18:35) and Schaefer were all present. Also present: Village of Rib Mountain – Administrator Rhoden and Finance Director Habeck; Village of Weston – Director of Finance Trautman; SAFER – Fire Chief Finke, Deputy Fire Chief Lang, Fire Marshal Christiansen, Battalion Chief McBain, Captain Lohman (via Zoom), Captain Novak (via Zoom), Engineer Schultz (via Zoom), Firefighter Franck (via Zoom), Firefighter Haas (via Zoom) 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 11, 2023, and approval of expenditures and receipts from July 2023. Motioned by Opall to approve prior meeting minutes from July 11, 2023, and expenditures and receipts from July 2023. Second by Schaefer. Motion carried 5:0. D. Business Items Discussion on Long Term EMS Services for the District. - Chief Finke said we’ve been struggling with staffing over the last several years and obviously all municipalities are strapped for funds and the district started out a bit behind because of the initial budgeting issues that were made early in its existence, through all that we’ve been trying to increase staffing, increase wages and we fought through a couple years of very high health insurance increases, WRS increases and the inflation over the last 18 months, so it’s been nonstop challenges and through all of that our call volume has gone up. The ability to obtain part-time firefighters and especially paramedics has gone down significantly, so we rely extremely heavily on a very small number of people to run the vast majority of our calls. We hoover right around that 4,000 total call mark, and about six people run over 70% of those 4,000 calls. That’s becoming an issue and that’s somewhat common with most fire departments it’s traditionally over the years when you get hired and you’re the young guy, you get stuck on the ambulance until somebody younger gets hired. Number one, those things are starting to change a little bit, people are going to departments where there’s rotation for example Merrill Fire Department works a 48/96 swing just like we do, but they have a lot lower call volume and they work one day on the ambulance and the next they’re on the engine and get to swap back and forth and our guys don’t get to do that. I think we need to look at, is SAFER going to continue to provide quality EMS services to our citizens over the next 5, 10, 15, 20 years? I think we need to start thinking about that now, and I talk about the response times and I ran some numbers really quick we have a much larger number of people than I’m comfortable with that are waiting long times for ambulances. Our ambulances are continually now running Weston to Rib Mountain and Rib Mountain to Weston and that happens not daily,  but frequently more than once a week and that results in patients waiting a long time for an ambulance. We need to think about how we’re going to tackle that long term, this is nothing that needs to change today or tomorrow and I know Langenhahn has talked about the County EMS and I don’t know if that’s a solution to this problem. The other thing is that I’ve said this before we always talk about EMS, EMS, EMS, but we have to make sure we provide fire coverage to our municipalities too, and in the end, we are a fire department. I realize that is a small part of what we do, but we do have several structure fires every year and we don’t hear about most of them because we do a good job of keeping most of them small. I personally in my position am extremely uncomfortable with the number of times that we have large portions of our area with either no fire coverage or fire coverage that’s going to be ineffective. There are multiple hours every single day that this side of the river has no fire coverage. - Maloney asked when do we determine that we’re going to call aid? - Chief Finke said with something like that we’ll call right away, but on this side of the river (Rib Mountain) if this station is empty and we get a fire call out in the Town of Marathon, we’re calling immediately but it’s going to take a long time. - Schaefer said in the past EMS subsidized fire and still does dramatically, if we were to take the budget and say this is what we’re spending on EMS, this is what we’re spending on fire and this is the revenue from EMS and this is the revenue from fire. I assume we’re making 6 figures on EMS and it helps subsidized fire, so the question becomes, when we look at this long term, not now, because at the moment it becomes the opposite, then we would consider an outside service, but at this point it’s difficult to think how we would go to any outside service other than combining with other departments. I know Wausau just hired a bunch of people and Riverside hired a bunch of people, are they just flushed with people so they’re not worried about it? - Chief Finke said Wausau has plenty of staffing and I believe it’s 23 on shift right now and Riverside is thin there also, by no means do they have plenty of staffing. - Deputy Chief Lang said they just had a firefighter resign for the same reason we do, we had one resign two years ago because we don’t pay enough and one of their full-times firefighters went to MedEvac full-time for the money, so Riverside has the same exact problems that we do with less staffing. - Maloney said did I not read about not doing all the transfers? - Chief Finke said return nursing home, right now we do a lot of them. - Maloney said I mean the long drive ones, and how much money is that bringing in? - Chief Finke said a lot. - Maloney said and how many bodies, if we just had those bodies for that? Is there a certain point we get the calls or is it 24/7, but if we can zone in to an 8- or 10-hour shift and create people for that reason. Now I know if there’s another call and we have to call for assistance, we still would have to do that and this person would have to be here to develop those funds and maybe do things right in the stations, I don’t know what that would be if it’s $300,000.00 - $500,000.00, all I know is it’s bought us a lot of chrome. - Chief Finke said we bring in approximately $300,000.00 - $400,000.00 a year in interfacility transfers and we’re lucky right now because we have a spectacular group of nurses and paramedics that are not interested in the fire service, but doing about 85% of those transfers off-duty, we’re rarely sending on-duty staff right now, which is spectacular. This right now, is working out really well, much better than it was 3-4 years ago. We looked at bringing in paramedic only positions, so to cast a wider net because there’s people that don’t want to do firefighting, the problem with that is if you are not a firefighter you cannot get paid on a firefighter schedule. A firefighter can work 212 hours in a 28-day cycle for overtime, if you’re a paramedic only it’s 40 hours in a week then you hit overtime. It’s more fiscally responsible for us to hire firefighter/ paramedic. - Deputy Chief Lang said we have nurses that supplement our staff a little bit and we have run into having to pay them overtime and their checks get very large, very quickly when you’re on a 40-hour week. - Cronin asked where is the conversation at the County going with County wide, where is that headed right now? - Chief Finke said I don’t know; it will get talked about and everybody gets all wound up about it and there’s a bunch of meetings, then everybody stops talking and nothing happens for another 6 months, then it starts back over again. - Cronin said I feel in that realm you need to have a cast of people that are going to push for it and not let it slip to the wayside like it has in the past, because this was talked about years ago and it’s gone nowhere. - Deputy Chief Lang said County EMS is going to cost money and at the end of the day, we still have to provide fire service. - Maloney asked how does some of that income get over to the fire departments? - Deputy Chief Lang said the bigger issue is that we have a staffing problem. - Schaefer said we’ll be left with an unsubsidized fire department to put out fires if we go to Countywide EMS. - Chief Finke said the vast majority of funding for a fire department only is going to have to come from the tax base. Action: No action needed. Discussion and possible action on 2024 Operational Budget and Staffing Plan. - Chief Finke said I basically have four options is what we came up with for staffing, Deputy Chief Lang and I worked on this and we have a Labor Management group and we had a fairly long meeting two weeks ago, regarding this. We try to get buy-in from the employees and input on what they think we need, the biggest feedback we got from the employees in that group were pay was their biggest concern, then staffing. - Maloney said just a thought because I didn’t hear this for a couple years about this group prior to you (Chief Finke) and you (Deputy Chief Lang), don’t minimize being heard. Being heard, having that group and having that discussion two weeks ago is huge, it doesn’t happen everywhere. They’re advocating option four? - Chief Finke said correct, Deputy Chief Lang is more for option 3 and I am more for option 2. My biggest concern and the reason I support option 2, is Fire Marshal Christiansen was talking about his work load and we roughly receive $100,000.00 in 2% Dues, we have to fulfill our obligations and get those fire inspections done. - Deputy Chief Lang said as far as the budget goes, I agree with Chief Finke, we have a definite need for a Fire Inspector, but we also have a need for staff. We’ve had as many as 9 or 10 options for this budget, and we’re trying to narrow it down to the most fiscally responsible numbers that we can give you. Ideally what do we need? Ideally, we need three staff and a Training Officer. - Chief Finke said ideally the hope was to have six, until that money fell through. The frustrating part for me is that the Legislators were pushing it and we went down to the Capitol and had these meetings and everybody was on top of it and assured it was going to go through, and now when it all fell apart both Deputy Chief Lang and I reached out to Senators and Representatives and we’ve heard nothing back. Even the advocacy groups for fire and EMS, they don’t seem to be all wound up about it, I’ve sent a couple emails, made a couple phone calls and the only other fire department in the area that knew about it was Stevens Point. - Deputy Chief Lang said the one funding source that we haven’t really pushed on or talked about is the shared revenue, I know both municipalities got shared revenue and you have to make decisions on how to spend that money. We were told by the Legislators that drafted that, that was drafted specifically for Police, Fire and EMS, and we were told they put the roads in there only because there’s smaller municipalities that don’t have fire and EMS and they needed a spending mechanism. That’s for finance, that’s a funding source that’s there, that was created for the problems we’re talking about right now. How do we pay for people, Training Officer and needs that we have. Our needs are greater than three staff and a Training Officer, and those needs are not going to change. The three people helps us with getting them in the rotation, the Training Officer helps with Fire Marshal Christiansen and I don’t know how we get it done. I know there’s levy freezes, levy issues and TIF districts. - Cronin asked how many times are we calling right now for mutual aid for EMS calls? - Chief Finke said I have looked lately, but I know we were on pace for about 80 this year. - Cronin asked and what do we make on an average EMS call? - Chief Finke said $400.00 – 500.00. - Deputy Chief Lang said Medicaid patients bring us down so much and from the GEMT of $335,000.00, you can see that our Medicaid population is significant, because Medicaid is paying a third of a third. Medicare pays a third of our bill and Medicaid pays a third of Medicare. - Schaefer said that’s $32,000.00 a year, so that doesn’t get you a lot. - Deputy Chief Lang said although Chief Finke and I are a little split on this, I agree we need number two, but I also agree that we need number three. - Chief Finke said the other concerning part with option number three is that, we’re delaying the start of the three people to offset some costs, so then we’re already spending additional money in 2025, so next year we’re going to be having this discussion and we’ve already spent $125,000.00 and next year there’s probably nothing that’s going to happen. - Cronin said where did the funds go that we were paying Division Chief Bechel with? - Chief Finke said that’s in here. The other thing to remember is we spent some money this year for next year already when we increased the third shift payrates. - Deputy Chief Lang said Division Chief Bechel’s money is built into option one with the wage increases. - Cronin said I’m not saying that people shouldn’t get paid, I feel that giving someone a $1,000.00 increase on their salary is only putting a band-aid on a huge problem. Eventually we’re going to be at a point it doesn’t matter how much you pay someone; they’re going to get burned out and we’re not going to have enough people. - Chief Finke said Gold Cross Ambulance in Appleton right now has a program where you go work three 12- hour shifts, you cannot work any overtime, so you’re maxed out at 36 hours, but they’re paying $37.50 an hour. - Schaefer said when I see these problems I always think, let’s stop thinking about how much money we’re going to spend, let’s look for money. So, the question is, where’s the revenue, where can we get the revenue? So, let’s look, number one we lost revenue because it was promised to us and now it’s gone, you are not government relations people, but Administrator Rhoden. We have a town association and maybe you’re a part of the league. Opall, you can direct your staff to work on this and Maloney, you can direct your staff to work on this. Number two, costs have gone through the roof for everything, are those being reflected in our ambulance fees? I know we just increased them. - Chief Finke said we can raise them as much as we want, you just don’t get paid for them. - Deputy Chief Lang said the more we increase our fees, the less money we make. Medicare and Medicaid are 55% of our call volume. - Chief Finke said if I asked the billing company the number of good paying insurance agencies, probably less than 10%. - Deputy Chief Lang said when we’re talking about staffing, we really need three so we can staff all three shifts equally and to hire three people we’re talking $280,000.00. To increase our fees for $280,000.00, I don’t see that happening. - Schaefer said remember that’s one aspect, attempting to go look where all this money is, is another aspect. Number three, what other revenue do we get? We get interfacility transports, is there an ability to get more by hiring someone or multiple people. The final thing is, are our inspection fees for this and others? - Deputy Chief Lang said we charge after the third reinspection, if we have to inspect four or more times, we charge them a $30.00 fee. Our fee is minimal because our lawyer said, and we’ve had this discussion because there’s other municipalities that charge $100.00 and then they compound that per $100.00, so if they’re there for a sixth inspection, they’re charging almost $1,000.00. Our lawyer told us if we try to charge something like that and if anybody fights that, they’re going to win because we have to show that’s what it costs us to preform that inspection. I don’t know how other municipalities are doing that. - Schaefer said we need to sometimes go up against the envelope and maybe push up against it and not always worry about that kind stuff and maybe be a little bit more aggressive because we’re talking about the future of SAFER and people’s lives, putting out fires and we have to not sit there and go well maybe someone’s going to say something. Let them say what they’re going to say, let’s try and figure out how we’re going to get the fees we need to get. - Chief Finke said the last time I was told this I almost got fired and I was pulled into about five closed session meetings, so the last time I tried to go find revenue I almost lost my job. - Schaefer said the last time I was opposed to charging for fires, but guess what, we’re up against it. - Chief Finke said I don’t know that there’s $400,000.00 – 500,000.00 out there that we’re going to go find, I’m open to anything. We could charge for fires, but even if we have a dozen fires a year and you charge $1,000.00, there’s $12,000.00. There’s something and it adds up, but it’s not a budget changing revenue source. - Cronin asked how much additional did we get from shared revenue? - Deputy Chief Lang said about $360,000.00. - Rhoden said ours was $193,000.00, but I can tell you, I don’t know what Everest Metro (Police Department) is asking for, but we already have Marathon County Sherrif’s Department in discussion for another officer for $112,000.00. - Maloney said Marshall from the County Board and thought we should disband EMPD and get all County Sherrif’s. I talked to Chief Schultz about it and he said we’d be paying easily additional $100,000.00. - Rhoden said the car is not included in that number. - Cronin said what I’m hearing here is maybe we need to go back to our boards and figure out if we can get some of that money for the shared revenue. - Rhoden said we had that conversation already, I know that Dunbar had reached out to Chief Finke, because we have to pay for the second half of our officer which we already committed to and on top of that. - Chief Finke said Dunbar did tell me $50,000.00 via email and I spoke with Trautman on the phone late last week and she thought that $180,000.00 was probably more than what the Village (of Weston) could afford. The other thought that the Labor Management committee came up with the option where you hire paramedics without benefits, we already have six full-time employees that don’t get benefits. - Maloney said because they have it somewhere else. - Chief Finke said no, they’re in the Market Place. - Cronin said do we need to look at doing a Public Safety referendum? - Deputy Chief Lang said we have talked about a referendum. We follow state referendums very closely since that revenue source has been shown, I’m an advocate for a referendum, but it’s really hard to pass a referendum, we’ve seen it’s about 50/50 on whether or not they pass. The closer you get to asking for one million dollars, the likelihood of that referendum drops significantly, especially if you go over one million dollars. The problem with the fire department is it’s continuous, so asking for one million dollars for this year for a referendum, next year that’s $1,200,000.00, then the next year it’s $1,400,000.00, the next year it’s $1,600,000.00 because you’re talking wages and benefits and the cost of that. - Cronin said if we were to ask, what do you think is a reasonable number? - Deputy Chief Lang said I think we need to look at our staffing needs. - Chief Finke said you’ll be in the $600,000.00 range. - Cronin said $280,000.00 if we hire three, so if we double that and we hire six we’d be at $560,000.00. - Schaefer said plus the Training Officer. - Opall said in the past we thrown around the idea of a premier tax district. - Maloney said fifteen minutes ago I was thinking the same thing. - Opall said we had a meeting in Rib Mountain and invited all the local municipalities, all the leaders and it did not go over. - Rhoden said it would go for law enforcement and public safety. - *Opall was excused. - Cronin said you mentioned that Trautman said $180,000.00 was too much for us, did she give you a number? - Chief Finke said Trautman didn’t, but when I gave her these options she told me two things, she said take option one off the table and she thought option three was going to be a little bit more than was doable. She told me EMPD needed $130,000.00 just to cover their raises. - Rhoden said the way she understood was that the raises could be covered by the new shared revenue. - Deputy Chief Lang said my question is if the municipalities would not have gotten that shared revenue, how were they planning on paying for the raises? From my understanding the shared revenue is new money, so if we come to you with our budget this year and our increase is $50,000.00 and that’s just raises and status quo, whatever the shared revenue number is, but I could be wrong, but the shared revenue that we could get is $150,000.00, why wouldn’t that be on top of the $50,000.00? - Maloney said something else gets cut. I can definitely see cutting all kinds of stuff, but not this. - Cronin asked how do we move forward? What are you looking for from us? - Chief Finke said a little direction, if you have feelings one way or another and that’s why I reached out to Dunbar and Trautman to get some direction on what they thought was doable. I was expecting a decision. - Cronin said I think we should seriously explore the idea of a referendum. - Maloney said but that doesn’t fix next year. - Cronin said I understand that, we still need to make a decision here. - Deputy Chief Lang said it’s the way you campaign it, the way that Western Lakes (Fire District) campaigned was not good. - Rhoden said with the referendum, it’s more beneficial for the Village of Weston than it is the Village of Rib Mountain, because we do have a lot of levy room for us (Rib Mountain) so at the bottom line, even with the referendum all it does is give you more flexibility on the levy, it still increases your rate and that’s just another hurdle to go through. - Schaefer said we wouldn’t need a referendum. One of the things we look at as a community is one of the number one selling aspects is our tax revenue. - Rhoden said option two actually fits in with the numbers. - Maloney said they’re looking for a number, is $150,000.00 the number to use for a budget? Rhoden is saying $145,000.00. - Chief Finke said Rhoden, just so you know 31.87% is Rib Mountain and Weston will be 68.13%. - Schaefer said $150,000.00 works for us. - Maloney said just throw in $150,000.00 and use it as a budget and see where it gets us. - Chief Finke said as I was doing the budget, I increased our EMS revenue by $100,000.00. - Cronin said I think another firefighter/paramedic whether it’s majority-time or full-time would be more appealing to the staff than a Training Officer, maybe an unpopular opinion. - Chief Finke said I don’t disagree with you. - Schaefer said I think what you’re saying is if we need to squeeze a little bit more money to get up towards $180,000.00, we should consider that? - Maloney said yes. Action: No action taken. Discussion and possible action on EMS License Downgrade. - Chief Finke said this all plays into the budget. - Maloney said did Riverside (Fire District) get the increase in June? - Deputy Chief Lang said yes, they are now paramedic level, so they have to run paramedic first out rig. - Maloney said and we’re advocating going down. - Chief Finke said yes. It all goes back to what I said in here that all fire departments are prideful and they will piecemeal stuff together every day until they can’t and it all falls apart, this all plays back to that. We just had a half an hour – forty-five-minute discussion on not being able to have the funding that we need to get us to where we need to be. We can’t continue to run the same few people that run all these calls, my thinking behind this if we downgrade to Flex Staffing, we can send some ambulances out as BLS ambulances, if we need to, we can take some of the workload off of those guys. We just had a situation on Saturday night, the only two paramedics we had in the district where our Battalion Chief and our Captain, I think you’d be very hard-pressed to find any other fire department in the country our size that has their Battalion Chief and Captain running the ambulance as the primary providers. That was our only option, and our Battalion Chief’s wife became very ill and was admitted to the hospital, he had to emergently leave work and he sent a text message to the only two options he had for people to come in which was Deputy Chief Lang and I. I was home with two little kids and luckily Deputy Chief Lang was able to come in and work, we don’t have any other options. Deputy Chief Lang and I are both working tonight, so something has to give and the only way I can think of doing that is giving us the ability to run BLS ambulances. Later on, in here we have an agreement with Wausau Fire to provide paramedic intercepts. My job is to present the facts and those are the facts. - Maloney said maybe we go into an interim type bases with the goal of getting back up. - Cronin said this would essentially allow us to send out an ambulance without a paramedic. What is going to be our staffing level then? - Deputy Chief Lang said it’s the same. There’s a difference between license and staffing, so our license level will be flex-staffing, but we’ll still staff paramedic rigs. What we’re going to do is triage the calls, if a call comes in for a lift assist, right now we have to send a paramedic to somebody who’s not hurt, just needs an assessment and needs to be lifted up. By doing this we can triage this as officers and send two EMT-B, so go and if the person needs to be picked, do that, if those EMT-B do an assessment and the person has a broken leg, they call back to the station and we send the paramedic. We’re not changing our staffing model; this will let us triage the calls so that we are not running six people. - Maloney asked do you feel this will take the stress off? - Chief Finke said it will some. - Maloney asked have you talked to the crew yet? - Chief Finke said no. The other thing to what Deputy Chief Lang said is the other night when Battalion Chief Meyers had to leave, we could’ve said find an EMT-B and we’ll run as a Basic service the rest of the night, if you need help, call Wausau Fire or Riverside. - Schaefer said the revenue loss is? - Maloney said minimal. - Schaefer said the actual amount of revenue loss is because, we charge less for BLS, if we bring both up, then we wouldn’t have a small loss, if we brought the BLS and ALS up on what we charge. - Chief Finke said I can talk to the billing company and see if they can give you a presentation on what our options are. - Maloney said do we just edge it up without even looking at the area, it doesn’t go out to the paper. - Chief Finke said we can, but I get calls two-three times a month because our ambulance rates are the highest in the area, and I have to say no they’re not and I compare them. Action: Motioned by Cronin to approve the EMS License Downgrade. Second by Langenhahn. Opposed by Schaefer. Motioned carried 3:1. Discussion and possible action on Auto Aid Agreement with the City of Wausau. - Chief Finke said this is something that I started working on a long time ago around the first of the year, and originally Chief Barteck seemed interested and then three-four months went by and he said he talked to his Battalion Chief’s and nobody sees a financial benefit to the City to do this and that’s where it got left. About three months after that Chief Barteck brought it back up and said he talked to his Battalion Chief’s again and they were interested. - Maloney said I think to have any partnership with the biggest department, instead of going backwards. - Cronin said anytime we get paged for a structure fire, they’re coming immediately. - Chief Finke said as long as they’re available. - Maloney said the stations that would be responding are? - Chief Finke said it’ll either be central fire or station 2 which is over by Menards. - Maloney asked central fire is the one on Grand? - Chief Finke said correct. Station 3 is over by Wausau East. - Maloney said they have three stations and how many employees? - Chief Finke said they’re close to 100 staff. - Maloney asked what’s the population here (Rib Mountain)? - Chief Finke said around 7,700. - Maloney said and we’re (Weston) is just shy of 16,000. Wausau is 39,000. - Deputy Chief Lang said our call volume is 4,000 and Wausau is running about 6,000 and they have quadruple the staff. - Cronin said you should use those numbers in your report. - Maloney said we talk about the other municipalities all the time and I feel we’re only talking about the ones that are lower or higher and I don’t feel that with the police department. Action: Motioned by Cronin to approve the Auto Aid Agreement with the City of Wausau. Second by Schaefer. Motion carried 4:0. Discussion and possible action on ALS Intercept Agreement with the City of Wausau. - Chief Finke said this ties back to the discussion of the license downgrade. If we intercept, which I’m sure we will, they will take half of our revenue on that call. - Cronin asked can we track that number? - Maloney said I know, but the whole thought is care and service. Action: Motioned by Cronin to approve the ALS Intercept Agreement with the City of Wausau. Second by Schaefer. Motion carried 4:0. Attorney Referral.  - None End of Month Budget review. - Chief Finke said the up-to-date budget is in there, and overall, it looks good. If anyone has any questions or comments. - Maloney asked what are we doing with some of the repairs here, is that happening or not? - Chief Finke said that was Kufahl who came down and started working and then he left, so I do not know where that fell now. - Deputy Chief Lang said they got some quotes on carpeting, but we didn’t see those quotes. - Schaefer said there’s going to be a lot of expenses in ten years at your new building. So, what is the policy? - Deputy Chief Lang said there’s an amount in there, the problem is it has individual things like windows and carpet, if we replace carpet and we put in carpet squares, then we would replace a square and that would be on us, but everything needs to be replaced. - Schaefer said we can’t sit there and make ad hoc rules, we should set a policy and run by it. - Maloney said there are rules. - Chief Finke said it depends how you read it, the way I read it SAFER’s responsible for carpeting and floor coverings and we asked Attorney VanderWaal about it because he wrote it and he said no, that’s if you have to steam clean the carpet or repair the carpet, that isn’t replacing the carpet. He used the example of his office, because he rents his office and if it needs new carpet, he doesn’t replace the carpet, my landlord does. - Maloney said the daily maintenance is inside. - Schaefer said it’s for cleaning windows as opposed to replacing windows? - Chief Finke said correct, and that was my point too, if SAFER has to start replacing doors and windows, that’s expensive items. The $6,000.00 I budget for building maintenance isn’t going to cover items like that. We have broken garage doors at both stations all the time and we pay for that. - Schaefer said but not a whole new one. - Chief Finke said correct. - Schaefer said it’s the maintenance and that’s the way I think it should be, I don’t know if it actually read that way, but now we have an interpretation from the attorney, so we can go with that. - Chief Finke said revenue is running about $130,000.00 ahead right now. - Schaefer said we’ve been with this billing company for a few years and are accumulating our bad debt, but they’re responsible for it. There’s a statute of limitations that comes up on those, have they started any write offs? Also, is there an ability to take some of the older uncollectable that they’ve tried but they can’t do it, but the statute of limitation hasn’t come up to sell that debt? - Chief Finke said I can ask that question. E. Staff Reports Report from Fire Chief - Fire Chief Finke said I know there was some more information that was wanted on Brycer in regards to inspections for extinguishers and Fire Marshal Christiansen will be going over it a bit. o Fire Marshal Christiansen said I included a few pages from Brycer, the biggest thing is it saves me a lot of time from different letters I would have to sit down, research and send out. On one of the sheets there’s 1,336 different inspections that I don’t have to do anymore. They all go into Brycer and if they’re late, I get a report and those reports I’ve never seen until we started using Brycer. Brycer gets the report from the company that was scanned into them and they send it to me for approval and once approved it goes away. This is going to go into our new software also. o Cronin asked what is Brycer? o Fire Marshal Christiansen said it’s a compliance engine and every vendor in town works with us and the occupancies that have sprinklers, alarms, all the way down to extinguishers. o Schaefer asked is it a self-reporting tool? o Fire Marshal Christiansen said the vendor’s report, then Brycer will send us a report. o Schaefer said instead of you looking at all, they upload it all and do it all and then you get a report and makes your job a lot easier.  o Fire Marshal Christiansen said when I go out, I know before I walk through the door whether the items are up to date or not. o Deputy Chief Lang said one of the best things about Brycer is there’s a lot of systems in a restaurant and before we were looking for the tag and the tag says it was inspected, with Brycer it gives us more detail with what that inspection was, did they pass inspection, if they didn’t what do they need to do to fix it. o Cronin said my question is on more of the cost of it and how that works. o Schaefer said so we’re taking a lot of your work and giving it to the customer. o Fire Marshal Christiansen said the vendors do it all. o Schaefer said Brycer goes out there? o Deputy Chief Lang said the vendor who is servicing the fire hood or the vendor who is servicing the sprinkler or the vendor who is servicing the fire extinguishers. Mississippi Welding does fire extinguisher servicing, and when they do the servicing, they upload that inspection they conducted. o Cronin asked who pays the fees? o Fire Marshal Christiansen said each vendor pays what is on the sheet. Depending on what they’re inspecting, they have to add that to their bill for the occupant. o Cronin said is every single one of the companies in the area that inspects fire suppression systems currently signed up to do this? The comment that this stemmed from for me was someone came to me who works for a fire inspection company in the area and the fire departments were telling him that they were not allowed to do work in our area if they were not using this compliance system. o Deputy Chief Lang said we have not told anybody that they’re not allowed to work in our area, because that would have to come through Chief Finke or I. o Cronin said there’s two sides to every story and I’m not throwing shade here, I just wanted to ask. o Chief Finke said realistically they’re technically being told without being told, to comply with our system, they wouldn’t be able to do inspections if they don’t report to Brycer. o Maloney asked what is the approximate time savings do you think? o Fire Marshal Christiansen said I don’t know how to measure it, it’s immense. o Cronin asked out of these fees, does 100% of it go to Brycer? o Fire Marshal Christiansen said yes, it doesn’t cost us a dime and we don’t get a dime, we get a ton in time savings. o Cronin said so if I don’t have my fire extinguishers done when you come to look at it and when you enter it that way, if Brycer calls me to verify that my fire extinguishers have been done or not. o Fire Marshal Christiansen said the only thing they go off of is that report. o Cronin said so they won’t call me? o Fire Marshal Christiansen said they’ll call you and tell you to call your vendor. A lot of these vendors are getting a lot more work because of it, because people won’t call and try to skip a year and then they get a letter and call the vendor. - Fire Chief Finke said I would like to introduce our Director of Medical Services Cally Gordon, she’s been with the department since 2015 and a paramedic since 2016, she’s also a PA in the Emergency Department at MMC in Weston and has a lot of experience and has been a firefighter for several years. We interviewed three individuals for that position, two internal and one external. 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 have a new recruit class starting in September. - EMS & Fire Incidents: EMS and fire responses are there. The graphs are on the following pages. Most of the fires were mutual aid, we had one MABAS strike team deployment to Portage County for a barn fire. - Training: Training hours are listed.  - Apparatus: The new ambulance is here, it’s not here currently, it’ll be here tomorrow morning. It will be ready to go, it’s getting decaled right now and then needs to be inspected. - Fire Prevention/Public Education: Those are listed. - Grants/Projects: We did receive a WPS grant that was $2,000.00 for buying two new 4-gas meters. - The DNR grant we applied for again for a 50/50 match for another $12,000.00. - EPR FireWorks is our new software system and we’ve made some large strides in that. Fire Marshal Christiansen is using that exclusively. Starting September 1st, we’re going to be doing that for all our fire reporting and training reporting. o Chief Finke said Deputy Chief Lang and Administrative Assistant Latimer have done a massive amount of work on that with a lot of data entry and Latimer sometimes literally spends 8 hours a day staring at the screen because FireWorks is great and it’s customizable the downside is it’s customizable and we have to set everything up the way we want it. It takes a massive amount of setup. - Deputy Chief Lang said the last thing that’s not in my report that I want to touch on is we talked to this board two years ago about managed IT services, it was not put into the budget, but we’ve been actively looking for what that’s going to cost. I asked for quotes from NewEra who we currently utilize and we asked for a quote from Dirks Group and CCIT. NewEra had a $18,000.00 implementation fee then $36,000.00 to manage our IT. Dirks Group implementation fee was about $10,000.00 then they gave us two different fees for the managed service, all in one was about $60,000.00 a year or the a la carte and that would be in the $36,000.00 range. 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 12, 2023 at SAFER Station 1. - Cronin asked if we can prepare a report that outlines some of these issues that you can present to our board in September? I would like that, because it sounds like Rib Mountain has some flexibility with your levy and I think that is more of an issue with us (Village of Weston) and I think we need to have a conversation with our board to bring them up to speed on what’s going on here. - 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 19:33