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

OFFICIAL MEETING MINUTES SOUTH AREA FIRE & EMERGENCY RESPONSE DISTRICT Board of Directors Meeting Tuesday, September 12, 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 and Opall were all present, Schaefer was absent and excused. Also present: Village of Rib Mountain – Administrator Rhoden (via Zoom) and Finance Director Habeck (via Zoom); Village of Weston – Administrator Donner and Director of Finance Trautman (via Zoom); Lifequest – Vice President Sales Rosin; SAFER – Fire Chief Finke, Deputy Fire Chief Lang, Director of Medical Services Gordon (via Zoom), Captain Klapoetke (via Zoom), Captain Lohman (via Zoom), Captain Novak (via Zoom), Lieutenant Bartus (via Zoom), Lieutenant Zellner (via Zoom), Engineer Schultz (via Zoom), Firefighter Franck (via Zoom), Firefighter Haas (via Zoom), Medic Rademan and Administrative Assistant Latimer. One guest 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 August 22, 2023, and approval of expenditures and receipts from August 2023. Motioned by Opall to approve prior meeting minutes from August 22, 2023, and expenditures and receipts from August 2023. Second by Cronin. Motion carried 4:0. D. Business Items Discussion and possible action on 2024 Operational Budget. - Chief Finke said there’s a copy of the budget and we did the multiple options at our last meeting. We narrowed it down to one and the total budget would be $3,352,015.00 with budgeting $1,613,805.00 in revenue which leaves us with a levy of $1,738,210.00. There would be an increase of $50,927.58 for the Village of Rib Mountain and $93,871.11 for the Village of Weston for a total increase in the levy of $144,798.69. - Maloney said and that’s what we talked about last month with Trautman. What is our increase in shared revenue for the Village? - Chief Finke said I think it’s $386,000.00. - Maloney said and what is Rib Mountain? - Habeck said $192,000.00. - Chief Finke said last time we talked about making those paramedic positions majority-time and not get health insurance, I changed it to where they will receive health insurance, so they’ll be full-time firefighter/ paramedics. I don’t think we will get any applicants if we don’t offer health insurance. - Maloney said Schaefer did say that he would support our decision here tonight. - Chief Finke said Schaefer did come in and meet with me last week.  Action: Motioned by Cronin to approve the 2024 Operational Budget. Second by Opall. Motion carried 4:0. Presentation on Ambulance Billing from EMS-MC. - Vice President Sales Rosin presented the percentages of our patients who have Medicare at 58%, Medicaid at 16%, Commercial Insurance at 13% and Private Pay at 13% and how this impacts our revenue. Discussion and possible action on EMS License Downgrade. - Chief Finke said this is back on because of an update. I did some confirmation work on this after our last meeting with the same agency that was here tonight giving the presentation. The agent misunderstood me and thought I was asking if it would change if we ran more BLS level calls, but kept our licensing the same. If we did change to flex staffing, then that does decrease revenue and anticipated $75,000.00 - $100,000.00. Action: Motioned by Cronin to reconsider the motion on the EMS License Downgrade. Second by Opall. Motioned 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. Right now, we could be $150,000.00 - $200,000.00 in the positive between our budgeted expenditures and revenue. We’re running about $160,000.00 ahead in revenue after our deposit today. E. Staff Reports Report from Fire Chief - Fire Chief Finke said as part of the budget that we talked about for this year, and looking at our fund balance from our last audit which was just over $1,200,000.00 and if we put an extra $200,000.00 in it, we will be at $1,400,000.00. If we look at our policy, we’re supposed to be at 25-33% of our budget which puts us in the range of about $825,000.00 - $ 1,100,000.00 and we’ll have a surplus of about $300,000.00 and that’s supposed to be used for one-time expenses. That’s something to think about because I’ll bring the CIP budget to the next Board meeting. - We’re in the middle of making another staffing change, moving into 2024, our staffing level will be at eight for twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week and right now our minimum staffing is at six. The idea was to make minimum staffing next year at six again. The difficultly with minimum staffing at six, is that it only leaves two people at this station (Rib Mountain). Number one for emergency response, two people here is not good and number two for daily chores, there is a lot of work to do at this station for two people. There’s cleaning, rig checks, running calls, training, yard maintenance, snow clearing in the winter and it’s a lot of work for two people. Deputy Chief Lang and I obviously jump in and help when we can. The plan was to bring the minimum staffing up to seven, which would help with emergency response and hopefully have eight as much as possible, as part of that, the thought was to replace three POC positions with three majority-time positions, it does not cause a hit on the budget because they’re being paid the same, it gives us more crew conformity. The downside with our POCs it will give them less opportunity for shifts to an extent. The POCs will fill in when people are out sick, injury and vacation time. I ran some numbers and for the first six months of the year, there was a total of 67 24-hour shifts that were taken off for PTO. When we fell below minimum staffing of six our full-time people came in between voluntary overtime and order-in overtime a total of 80 shifts. - We did lose two full-time employees, one is majority-time who is Lieutenant Bartus and he stepped back to part-time and our Engineer/Paramedic Riesterer left for a position with Manitowoc Fire Department and we do have that position posted and we had a couple of applicants who are qualified. 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: With Engineer Riesterer’s exit, we’re filling that position with a FF/Paramedic trying to reorganize that title. We are reclassifying majority-time to full-time with limited benefits and this is for a couple of different reasons, the biggest reason that has come to our attention, we have basically full-time employees who are trying to get loans for homes or vehicles and they put down majority-time on the application and the bank says what is that? - EMS & Fire Incidents: EMS and fire responses are there. - Training: Training hours are listed. We did send several people outside of the state for training. We had two individuals do ProBoard Confined Space in Beaver Dam and we sent four including the Chaplin to CISM training. - Apparatus: The new ambulance is here, we received it on August 4th and it took awhile to get everything going, but it went into service August 30th. - Fire Prevention/Public Education: Those are listed. - Grants/Projects: The new software is being implemented. 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, October 10, 2023 at SAFER Station 2. - Cronin said where are we at with brainstorming on how we want to solve some of these staffing issues, are we looking into some of those grants we discussed? o Deputy Chief Lang said this is going to come up over the next several months, because we’re going to be putting in for a SAFER grant in January, if the Board supports that. That’s a discussion that we’re going to have to have, is how many positions we put in for. We have an idea or recommendation, but that’s going to be up to the Board and what the municipalities can afford once we get to that year three and four mark. Chief Finke has been in contact with Representative Tiffany and they said to us if we apply for any federal grants, to let them know and they’ll send a letter of support for us. It’s going to be up to the Boards discretion on whether or not we start talking about running referendums next fall. o Opall said with the Town of Rib Mountain just being incorporated, and we’ve alluded to our taxpayers that we didn’t expect a large increase in any kind of tax. Not that I’m against it. o Deputy Chief Lang said the Chief and I appreciate the position you all are in with your municipalities and the levy limits. From our standpoint, at some point we’re going to need to do something, we’ve been talking about our budget and were we’re at. We appreciate the increases we’ve gotten, but at some point, we’re going to need a significant increase to our budget just to sustain the service that we’re providing. o Chief Finke said at the last Board meeting I made those presentations, it’s not my decision, it’s the Boards decision, I’m just presenting the facts, at some point either there’s going to have to be some significant budget increase whether that’s through a SAFER grant which will buy the municipalities a little bit of time to figure out how they’re going to pay for it, or there’s going to have to be a change where some of the services we provide are sent off to somebody else. Because the current way we are doing things, we passed the budget for 2024 tonight, so we won’t worry about it for 9-12 months. o Cronin said this needs to stay on the radar, I don’t want to forget about it. o Rhoden said my question is if we’re having fund balances as large as they are, do we need to be looking at our budget and finding out if we’re budgeting appropriately? I’m not sure what the percentage of the increase is or what percentage is left. If you can be within 5% of your budget, you’re doing good, otherwise if you’re going above 5% in essence are you overcharging your residents for your budget. o Chief Finke said I agree with you and that’s part of the reason I brought that up tonight, the other thing is think back to four or five years ago when the district was in the hole because of budgeting being done the other way. What’s very difficult for me to do is, I have no idea how many ambulance calls we’re going to have every year. Our numbers can fluctuate by a few hundred very easily, diesel prices may double in a year, expenses can be all over the place and if all of those things compound in a bad year, things can go south quickly. The fire departments budget is probably the hardest to manage from a revenue standpoint, because the police department knows what their revenue is  going to be, the Village of Weston and the Village of Rib Mountain have a good idea what their revenue is going to be, but ours can fluctuate a lot from year to year. o Rhoden said I understand that, if we’re starting to actually create a bit of a balance it might be something to consider. We have a general fund balance policy in Rib Mountain that any of the fund balance has to be used for a one-time expenses and it’s something to consider. Another thing that we do for example with law enforcement, we’re adding additional deputies on and we kind of spaced it out and we put in seed money and that’s maybe something the Board needs to consider. For example, one year we’ll put away 25 and then it will be another 50, by the time that additional officer comes on, it’s not such a hit to the budget, even if you have to say you won’t start that officer until July 1st or we won’t have that officer start until September, either way we try to space that out so it doesn’t impact the budget all at once. o Cronin said the only problem here is, when you increase staffing, you have to increase by multiples of three, you’re not increasing by one person, you have to add one on each shift. You’re not looking at a $75,000.00 position, you’re looking at $300,000.00 for three positions. o Deputy Chief Lang said the other thing that we’ve done is, we’ve looked at our numbers. Four years ago, when we were having fund balance issues and we changed our revenue which is 50% of our budget, we decreased that down to $1,000,000.00, so we’ve added every year over $100,000.00. This year’s budget, we’re asking for a levy increase of $145,000.00, but we’re increasing our budget $250,000.00, so we’re adding another $100,000.00 to our budget getting closer to that budget number, so next year we have a projected revenue of $150,000.00 - $200,000.00, but next year we made that gap smaller so now we have a $50,000.00 leeway and when 50% of our budget is determined by $50,000.00 that makes us really nervous. We end up having to do things like brown out stations and that’s people’s jobs, so we can come in in the black because four years ago when we were in the red. o Chief Finke said we don’t want to go through that again. I have managed the budget potentially a little bit too conservatively and I think that’s probably what I’ve gone through in the last seven years. We can continue to look at that, I agree 100% with what Rhoden said, if we have $1,000,000.00 in the bank, we can be a little bit more aggressive, but I don’t want to get to the point where we have to go backwards. o Rhoden said you can use the general fund balance for the one-time expenses for equipment that you do need and then my secondary point was that you planned out additional people, if you plan that almost like a capital improvement plan and you do it for people and by 2025 you want to have three additional people on shift, how do we get there, do we put money away now and then we budget and try to put seed money in there, so when that hit comes, it’s not as significant. Then if you do get grant money, all the better. o Chief Finke said we made that proposal in the past and granted that was with a different Board and it wasn’t supported because they said that’s great, but what do you do the year after? It happens every year, not just that one year. The feedback that we were given by the Board at the time is we cannot make a budget for 2021 when we’re doing the budget for 2020. We had a very detailed staffing plan that we presented about four or five years ago and we were basically told to throw it in the garbage. The other thing we’re fighting against is we’re trying to do four things at the same time; we’re fighting massive inflation, we have a health insurance increase, we have a staffing shortage and our employees are paid significantly less than everybody that surrounds us. We’re trying to correct four problems at the same time which makes it astronomically difficult. - Langenhahn has nothing. - Opall has nothing. - Maloney said the only thing I wanted to talk about was Finance Director Habeck and Director of Finance Trautman, I know Trautman and Dunbar enjoyed a really good relationship and I saw Habeck last month, so is that transition, is that happening with the communications between the two communities, is that working well? o Rhoden said we had a bumpy start, Habeck had some time already planned off. o Habeck said on the limited time I’ve had to reach out to Trautman, she has been helpful and responsive.  o Chief Finke said for scheduling wise, we always meet at 8:30 am, the Thursday before the Board meeting, so if there’s anything we have to prepare for the Board meeting it gives us some time. G. Adjourn Motion by Cronin to adjourn. Second by Opall. Motion carried 4:0. Maloney adjourned at 18:39