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

OFFICIAL MEETING MINUTES SOUTH AREA FIRE & EMERGENCY RESPONSE DISTRICT Board of Directors Meeting Tuesday, August 13, 2024 @ 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 Vice Chairman Al Opall. Members Present Board of Directors – Cronin, Langenhahn, Maloney (via Zoom), Opall, and Schaefer were all present. Also present: Village of Rib Mountain – Administrator Rhoden; Village of Weston – Administrator Gebert, and Finance Director Trautman; SAFER – Fire Chief Finke, Deputy Fire Chief Lang, Director of Medical Services Gordon-Haessly (via Zoom), FF Ukpong (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 9, 2024. Motioned by Schaefer to approve prior meeting minutes from July 9, 2024. Second by Cronin. Motion carried 5:0. Board of Directors approval of expenditures and receipts from July 2024. Motioned by Cronin to approve expenditures and receipts from July 2024. Second by Schaefer. Motion carried 5:0. D. Business Items Presentation of 2025 Budget. - Chief Finke handed out a hard copy of the budget. - Rhoden asked has anything changed from the last time you sent it with the packet? - Chief Finke said the only thing different is the new copy has the split on it for the percentages. This budget the major changes are with the salaries due to the Union contract, this budget also does have a Fire Marshal/Training Officer that would start July 1, 2025. - Schaefer asked how much does one of those persons cost per year? - Chief Finke said per year with benefits would be $85,000.00 – 90,000.00. - Gebert asked are they part-time until then? - Chief Finke said I have somebody working this year, I do not have anything in this budget for next year with the part-time person. - Schaefer said when we look at revenue you’re going with last year's number, but we’re really not hitting last year's number and I know why we’re not hitting last year's number, but I don’t have a lot of faith we’re going to hit next year’s number. - Chief Finke said I left it because the professionals doing the billing assure me that we will hit the number. - Schaefer said what we have to spend to fulfill the union contract is tough not to pay, there’s no other way around it, other than cutting existing staff. - Chief Finke said there are some budget lines we could cut some amounts out of, but it’s very minimal. We could cut training, but our training budget is $14,000.00 which is not big dollar items. If I went through and got numbers cut back there’s probably $20,000.00 – 30,000.00 I could trim out if I had to. The other item we could take out is the Fire Software of about $23,000.00 a year, the state does offer a free version that we could use. The downside is it gives us next to no ability to pull data. - Schaefer asked what is the difference between a full-time Fire Marshal/Training Officer and a part-time person. - Chief Finke said approximately $50,000.00 – 60,000.00 difference. - Schaefer asked what about hiring two part-time Inspectors. - Chief Finke said we could, the issue with the part-time staff is the dependability, they all have other jobs and the drive to come in is just not there. - Schaefer said it’s a big year with a big increase because of what we’re doing, if we could not add to staff by getting the Fire Marshal/Training Officer and go with part-time, that would be preferable. - Chief Finke said another thing that Trautman thought we should consider, we have some monies that I expect to come in between the sale of the ladder truck and the sale of our monitor/defibrillators, which would bring us in approximately $155,000.00. On the last page, there are three examples of what it would cost each municipality to help offset the increase for this year. Action: No action taken. Discussion and possible action on RFP for IT Managed Services. - Deputy Chief Lang said we’ve had some issues with our IT this year. We’ve spent over $6,100.00 and support charges to New Era for outages, issues, and problems. That amount is a premium because we’re mostly going down on weekends, it’s causing several issues, number one we’re paying a premium to get our network back up, and number two we’re not a managed plan. Typically, when we call they ask can it wait till Monday, it can’t wait till Monday, we’re a fire department, but we don’t have a contract, so we pay a premium. In 2023, we spent $1,960.00 in support, and the support is going up. We’ve talked about managed IT services several times, the last time was the 2022 budget, at that time Stieve had presented it and he was taking care of the onsite program and said he might have five years left, which he only had one year left and he’s not here anymore. I’m doing IT and my degree is not in IT at all. Being 2024, we’re having more IT issues and we’re more IT dependent. On top of that, we have an aging server that is going to need replacement in three to five years, and right now today with the set-up it would be $22,000.00 – 28,000.00. Chief Finke and I talked and we don’t think we need a server anymore, because that’s the way it was done 25 years ago, now everything is cloud-based, but to go cloud-based, we need a managed plan. New Era’s onboarding fee is $12,750.00, where Dirks Group onboarding fee is $10,600.00. New Era monthly plan with email from Microsoft 365 is $2,717.50 and Dirks Group monthly plan with email from Microsoft 365 is $3,135.08. - Cronin asked was this in the budget. - Deputy Chief Lang said yes, this is added to the new budget. We added $30,000.00 to the budget. - Schaefer said one of the aspects of IT services is this organization has fumbled through it by doing it in different ways and at some point, you have to modernize and become part of this century. Is there an ability to bring them under our Dirks Group contract and save some money there, I think we have to probably spend the money upfront and get this transitioned. - Cronin asked and your recommendation. - Deputy Chief Lang said our recommendation is Dirks Group. - Schaefer said bring back the budget to us, but I would want to see is go with part-timers for a year, go with Dirks Group, and do the 50% CIP and that would soften the amount this year. Action: No action taken. Discussion and possible action on EMS Billing Company Quotes. - Chief Finke said I had a memo typed up and I must’ve forgotten to send that out so I apologize. We have three options:  - EMS|MC is our current company and I think everyone is aware of them and the issues that we’ve had over the past several months. I did speak with them and tried to negotiate and we spoke with their President George Abatjoglou and he says he anticipates us getting 4-6% better collections through EMS|MC than we got through LifeQuest. I said if you’re confident in that, what if we come up with something where it’s a pay-for-performance if you get us 3% more, we’ll keep paying what we’re paying, but if you don’t get us 3% more, you’ll have to cut our rate. They agreed and he sent us a letter looking at 2023 versus 2024, if they don’t collect at least 3% more per trip, they will reduce our rate from 5.75% which is currently down to 4.75%. They have their own internal collection department, if we don’t collect through normal means they go to collections and we pay a higher percentage for those bills that get turned over to collections. - Pintler Billing Services out of Montana, is a significantly smaller service than EMS|MC which has about 1,500 clients to Pintler which has 40 clients. Their rate that they offered to us was 8%. - Cvikota EMS Billing out of Eau Claire, another smaller agency that has been in business for a long time. They currently do billing for 30 EMS agencies, they do not offer collection services and their rate was 5.5%. They do not have an internal collections department, but if somebody needs to get turned over to collections, they use Certified Recovery Inc. out of Eau Claire and work with each other, we don’t have to touch it, Cvikota EMS would turn it over to Certified Recovery and we would have two separate contracts. I also spoke to Certified Recovery and they have two different rates, 25% which is normal, and the other if they have to take legal action where attorneys are involved, they charge 50% and cover all the attorney fees. - Cronin asked what percentage of our runs go to collections. - Chief Finke said it’s less than 5%. - Maloney asked how has EMS|MC done in the last thirty days. - Chief Finke said we were $30,000.00 below our target last month; we’re running about $300,000.00 under for the year. I will say in their defense is the amount of money that they’ve billed out is over $1,000,000.00, and about $700,000.00 of that has happened in the last 45 days. We had a large deposit at the beginning of this month. - Cronin asked what’s the payment terms once they bill it out. - Chief Finke said it’s typically 30 – 45 days. - Schaefer asked what’s the terms of our contract with EMS|MC. - Chief Finke said we would need to give notice in October, so at the latest we would need to make a decision on this by next month. I think if we were to make a change, I would want to make that change as soon as possible because there’s going to be a bit of transition work that we’ll have to do on the back end with FireWorks our ePCR software to get it switched over to the new company and that everything flows smoothly. Our contract ends December 18, 2024, and we need to give 90-day notice. - Opall said we should have this on the agenda next meeting. - Cronin asked is there a way for us to push the button with them a little bit, maybe make a motion to make a change effective at the end of September and that motion could be rescinded if we see a change. Action: Place on next meeting agenda. Motion by Schaefer to go with an alternative to EMS|MC unless billings dramatically increase. Second by Langenhahn. Motion carried 5:0. Discussion and possible action on Audit Services Quote. - Chief Finke said as per the Board’s request, I spoke with Hawkins Ash for updated prices for the next three years of Audit Services and those amounts are $8,800.00, $9,240.00, and $9,700.00 which I thought were reasonable prices. Action: Motion by Schaefer to go with Hawkins Ash for Audit Services. Second by Cronin. Motion carried 5:0. End of Month Budget review. - Chief Finke said the up-to-date budget is in your packet and nothing overly significant other than the revenue portion that we’ve already talked about. As far as expenditures we’re on track.  Attorney Referral. - None E. Staff Reports Report from Fire Chief - Fire Chief Finke said we have a planned meeting on Thursday for the Sub-Committee for the merger discussions. - Myself, Deputy Chief Lang, one Battalion Chief, and one Lieutenant are going to Appleton on Thursday morning to look at the new ladder truck, and then I would anticipate that will be here next week. After we look at it all they have to do is undercoat it, then they’ll deliver it. - We burned the house on Woodbine a couple of weeks ago on probably one of the hottest days of the year. The crews did great, both our crew and the mutual aid partners that came to help. - Along the lines of talking about shortages across the state, the country, and even in our area, the Wausau Fire Department had a structure fire last week and they called a MABAS Box Alarm which included us, Riverside FD, Maine FD, Town of Wausau FD and one other department. The only two departments that showed up were us and Riverside FD, none of the other departments could get anybody to respond. As we talk about these mergers and things moving forward, just bear in mind that’s what happens. - We went to Merrill the other Saturday for a MABAS Box Alarm call, myself and our ladder truck went up there. The ladder truck got turned around and came back right away, I stayed up there for a couple of hours and helped. It ended up not being nearly as bad as it sounded. 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: One of our full-time employees resigned along with one in June. We’ve already replaced one of those positions with FF/Paramedic Haessly and we extended an offer to Tabitha Allen from De Pere and is going through the pre-employment physical portion. - EMS & Fire Incidents: EMS and fire responses are there. - Training: Training hours are listed with topics. - Apparatus: Engine 11 pump needed to be rebuilt. Tender 11 while pump testing the PTO shaft bearing went out. - Fire Prevention/Public Education: Activities are listed. - Grants/Projects: We’re working on several Grants for EMS items. The DNR Grant was submitted. 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 for Tuesday, September 10, 2024 at SAFER Station 1. - Cronin has nothing. - Langenhahn has nothing. - Maloney has nothing. - Schaefer has nothing. - Opall has nothing. G. Adjourn Motion by Cronin to adjourn. Second by Langenhahn. Motion carried 5:0. Maloney adjourned at 18:54