White River Township Fire Protection District

Pre-Meeting Report for April 5, 2005

Compiled March 22, 2005

1) I will be in Australia until April 7^th and will therefore not be able to attend the upcoming district board meeting. Therefore, I am sending out the pre-meeting report as of today to bring you up on some of the projects that have been in the works since last month. Because of this, I will e-mail each of you the detailed (and reconciled) March finance reports on the 7^th. I will also be sure that there is a Y-T-D report (as of today) at the meeting for review.

2) Tony Slusher is working on acquiring all of the paperwork from the Volunteer Corporation close-out. He will have an update at the District Board meeting.

3) The Station 51 Building Team held its eleventh meeting on March 21^st to finalize the overall floor layout. The architects were on hand with updated prints and to assist on the project from a design point-of-view. The architects will also be in attendance at the district board meeting to give a detailed project update report. The next phase would be design development where the mechanicals are looked at in order to get the most accurate and detailed cost estimate possible. The next meeting of the building team is on April 20^th at 9am at Headquarters where these items will be discussed. This meeting will also be one day after the drainage board hearing at the county.

At the last meeting, the initial discussion regarding financing took place. Although there are several decisions to be made, I would suggest holding off on utilizing any of the cash accounts. There a couple of reasons. Primarily, since we do not actually receive our first tax checks until May/June of the budget year, we must rely on cash in the accounts to get us from January 1^st through June. Last year, we were within about $400,000 of running out of cash in late May until we received our tax disbursement. Secondly, one of the goals of the District was to become independent of the “Fire Loan” system (outside of large building projects such as fire stations of course), but in order to get to the point where apparatus cycling, small building projects, etc is self-sufficient, we need to have the large sums available in the Cumulative Fund.

4) The Station 52 project is moving along according to the architects as well. They say they have had a lot of interest on the project and that the budget numbers are looking good. They will have a more definitive update at the district board meeting.

5) The Safety Board Document update was completed on our end and is now at the attorney’s office for legal review. We are not sure when it will be completed, so it will be left on the agenda in case it is finished in time.

6) Chief Tibbetts and Chief Brown met with Danny Maples, the White River Township Trustee to discuss the potential for invoking a fire protection ordinance for White River Township. He was very favorable toward the plan and wanted feedback from Bargersville Fire Department on what they thought. Chief Brown has since been in contact with the Chiefs at Bargersville and their initial reaction was also very positive. If there is no opposition or further revisions to the proposal, Danny said he would like to take the project to the county commissioners in about a month.

7) Chief Thacker and Chief Slauter are still anticipating a meeting with the District Board sub-committee regarding the Employee Performance Reviews and how they will review the upper management positions. They will probably not be ready to present an update at the upcoming district board meeting and therefore will not be on the agenda to do so.

8) We finally took delivery of the last staff vehicle that we ordered last year. Now that we are back to a full compliment, we are able to sell the two vehicles (two 1999 Chevrolet Tahoes) that were slated to be sold at the end of last year. Following the state’s disposal rules, we published an ad in the paper on March 18^th and again on March 25^th (this Friday). The official bid opening will be at the district board meeting as bids (with minimums of $10,760 and $9,785) are due by 7pm that evening. At this point, we are hoping to sell them to another fire department, police department, security agency, etc and sell both as is (with the emergency equipment on them). They both have been de-striped, cleaned, and are ready for public inspection at Headquarters. I’ve included a copy of the flyer (just in case you might be interested!).

9) The 457 Plan deposits for Kim, Jackie, and Chief Tibbetts for retroactive years back to 1999 (2004 for Jackie) have all been made and everyone is now up-to-date. No problems were incurred in making this happen.

1) That’s it for this month. See you soon…… Scott