White River Township Fire Protection District

Board Meeting Minutes

May 3, 2005

District Board Members Present: Dr. Chuck Shufflebarger, Paul Kite, Butch Sutton, Jim Dodson and Jon Raker.

White River Twp Fire Department Employees Present: Chief Tibbetts, Chief Thacker, Chief Slauter, Chief Brown, Chief Cassin, Chief Wilson, Lieutenant Hart, Captain Skipper, Lieutenant Funkhouser, Josh Justice, Lieutenant Hurrle and Jackie Emmons

Others Present: Steve Dyson and Brian Bosma

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Dr. Chuck Shufflebarger called the meeting to order at 7 p.m.

Minutes from the April meeting were accepted with a motion by Paul Kite and 2^nd by Dr. Shufflebarger, all in favor and motion carries.

Chief Cassin discussed the financial updates

Utilities are up (mainly Natural Gas), but otherwise not too bad.
Building and apparatus maintenance

i. These are flip flopping as we are seeing more of the supplies going up and the actual services going down. “The primary drive behind that is that we have a lot of guys in-house now that are educated in the mechanical realm so they are going out and getting the parts themselves and fixing a lot of the problems that we used to have to farm out. So I think that’s why you are seeing a shift in that.”

ii. Chief Cassin said otherwise everything looks okay to him.

Chief Cassin stated that he received a call this morning from the county and our CAGIT check is ready to be picked up and he will get that tomorrow.

Regarding Station 52, Brian Bosma recalled that Dudley Senefeld actually spoke with Chief Cassin this morning and at the last meeting they were going to get us bid packages for review. They said they would get those to us by the end of the week we need to review them and turn that around quickly. Brian said he will contact them if he has not heard anything by Friday.

We just need to make sure it is in appropriate form and has everything included in it and we will be ready to proceed.
The second part of this is the contract on 51 which is the bigger project and 52 is the smaller project. Senefeld would like to work under one contract including both projects for station 51 and 52, which Brian agrees is okay
Dudley Senefeld talked with Brian about the fee on Station 51 which was approximately 10% of the construction costs. Brian’s rule of thumb is 6% and the absolute low end is 8 % at the higher reasonable end and sometimes you have to agree to 9%, but 10% is out of the ball park. Brian told them that and they were to get to us materials to justify their additional services which we have not yet received and brought that to their attention today and ask they get that to us by Friday. The 6, 8, 10 is design and engineering. Dudley’s explanation was that they had a better and consequently more expensive team put together with engineering, etc.
What they proposed was essentially adding the $150,000 Station 51 services to the 52 contract and really doing them for no fee at a super small project like that it might be real reasonable to say okay we will give you 10% for engineering on that one. So if the fee for that one was $15,000 and you chucked it over on the 52 contract we are starting to get more on the reasonable end of things a little more than 9%. So again they were going to get us some materials and we haven’t seen that yet.
The additional question is - hiring them as essentially construction managers which Brian would suggest would be a good thing. They actually put an on site construction manager on the project with Dudley supplementing that a couple of days a week. Brian stated we are still working on the fee for that also, they were going to get us material on that and if I have not see that by Friday I will call them.
The land acquisition fee is on the construction costs which includes actual estimates of bid, materials and services, plus contingency and that’s it.
Chief Cassin stated we have paid Senefeld’s about $25,000 total since the project started. Brian said they would be sure that we take this credit. We have gone through the entire phase one which is the layout and phase two is mechanical. Brian Bosma said you have schematic, design development, and then construction documents.
Brian suggested we designate someone to come to a final conclusion on that in the 9% zone. We do not have to agree to a construction manager yet and he will present something to you at the next meeting. All the terms are set, they raised a couple of issues that we squared away, so other than the fees themselves everything else is in place.
Brian said we can move to authorize him to approve of and negotiate a final contract. Dr. Shufflebarger was authorized to act on behalf of the District Board to sign necessary documents on behalf of the board. A motion by Butch Sutton and 2^nd by Paul Kite, all in favor and the motion carries.

Brian Bosma said on Station 51 the real estate acquisition was completed and the deed has been executed, so that is all squared away. Scott told Brian today that the drainage plan has been approved, and Brian is working on and will file the application for exemption of property tax by May 15.

Trish and Steve did some leg work on the financing end of it and they actually did some dry runs that Jerry put together. Please see the (White River Fire Protection District Rate Sensitivity Analysis) attached to the file copy.
Brian said there was some talk that this would have to be done with a lease purchase transaction which is more complicated and adds about $30,000 to the financing costs. Instead we can do a general obligation bond which can be paid over any number of years or a fire loan which we are also empowered to do which is a short form bond issue a little bit less expensive still many of the same steps but the documentation is much less and it has to be paid back in 6 years. So Jerry did some rough estimates at different interest rates as to what the payments would be at various levels. Two million and three million at a couple of different rates. You can see roughly what your payment is annually less than $400,000 per year annually at the 2 million dollar level. If it were the 3 million construction it would be about $600,000 a year in two equal payments and that gives you a feel for the cash flow.
We will go through the same loan procedure that we have done at other times before for various equipment and buildings.
Brian said I guess there were also some questions last time as to what was included in the 2004 fire loan and we went back and looked at that and confirmed that we presented to the DLGF and basically they approved it. The purchase of property for a new Station 54 which is a glimmer at this point, so that was included in that.
Butch said the question that was raised last month is that money useable for anything except buying property. Brian said not that portion of the money, the estimated price we gave them was $265,000; we also gave them an estimate of $300,000 for property to replace Station 51. Is that $35,000 usable, yes, we have $300,000 stuck in a cubby hole that is there to buy property sometime. She put in here that it did not include the request for a third station in anticipation of the expansion of I69 eliminating 53.
Please see attached to the minutes a document (Comparison of Three Loan Scenarios) passed out by Steve Dyson which has an analysis concerning Comparison of Three Loan Scenarios.

Performance review. Chief Thacker said they met earlier at 6 p.m. this evening to go over things, from Division Chief on down we are ready to go with the performance review.

The focus this evening was the Deputy Chief and Fire Chief review and basically Butch outlined a plan that he would like to see in place. Which we want to create some objectives and the time line would be February of 06 in which the District Board would meet in executive session and agree to the objectives for the review for the Deputy Chief and Fire Chief.
In May we would basically have a first checkpoint which committee members would meet with the Fire Chief and Deputy Chief and go over objectives. In May there would be a second check point and in between May and August there would be some type of peer review which personnel from the Division and Battalion Chief level would perform a peer review on the Fire Chief and Deputy Chief.
In October the final peer review would be taken care of.
November another executive session of the District Board would discuss a final review of that year so you would have a feel and understanding of how things are going at upper level.
We want to include Chief Tibbetts and Chief Cassin to come up with some objectives.
Some of the areas of review would be the following objectives

i. Financial accountability

ii. Inter-department leadership

iii. Response capabilities

iv. Community outreach

v. Personal development

vi. Long reach planning

The peer review discussion would the peers feel that if they spoke freely would there be retaliation and they want to feel comfortable to speak freely and we need feedback to be assured there would not be back lash.

i. Jon Raker said his department has peer reviews but he does not participate in them and will have to check into the process.

ii. Dr. Shufflebarger said his are supposed to be anonymous but there is not a lot of anonymity to it especially when you consider a relatively small crew. He thinks there are advantages and disadvantages to both ways. Supposedly it is more apt to give critical feedback if it is more anonymous and there is a certain leadership and accountability thing associated with being direct with your recommendation. It could be played both ways, we just need to make a recommendation that everyone is comfortable with Dr. Shufflebarger says that is his feeling.

iii. Chief Tibbetts said his feeling is that if they are not honest with him how can he do anything if there is something wrong. Chief Tibbetts said the thing that he hates is for someone to tell him one thing to his face and then go behind his back and say just the opposite. Then say they are either intimidated or afraid or whatever, so put in some type of stipulation that no retaliation would be administered to anybody that does speak. Brian Bosma said it can’t be by law anyway it is conduct unbecoming an officer.

iv. Chief Cassin agreed with the Chief he said he would personally value opinions because you know these guys see stuff that he doesn’t see. Chief Cassin thinks it would work. The group that we have now is going to be here for a long time.

v. Dr. Shufflebarger said if you are going to be open it is kind of a leadership quality if the Battalion Chief level would give a feedback report to the Chief and then come back to one of us and say you know I really didn’t want to tell him this that we are really upset about this or that, there is a problem there and it is not necessarily on a Chief level. If you want to go open I think that would work. We are a small group anyway. Chief Cassin said it would work because the guys see things they do not and need to report it. Dr. Shufflebarger said being open is a leadership quality at the Battalion level and above this should be open. Chief Thacker said keeping it anonymous in a small group would not work.

The performance review project will start in June because that is the 6 month anniversary of the 20 career we just hired. This is a good place to start with them as probationary personnel.

Then all employees will have an annual review as well.
Chief Thacker plans on putting together a report with feedback on how smoothly it went and suggestions.
We will have points to build on and develop a report to evaluate.
Butch said primary thing he wants to do is rock the boat and it will not be perfect as with anything you start there will be problems. The evaluations of the two Chief Officers we need to get some objectives in place over the next month or so that we can review just more to see what needs to be in place next year than to have a real heavy duty cloth to hold over your head for next year because we don’t know what objectives need to be in place now.
The reason for the two executive sessions instead of one is that we felt there needed to be a little time from reviewing one year to establishing the objectives for a new year even though the calendar start date is off a month. We want to get something locked in stone that two months are targeted to be executive sessions.
Dr. Shufflebarger said this sounds like it has about come together.
Chief Thacker made a good point that in all the different fire service organizations we are unique. We are a unique fire organization because we do not have that one single executive that we respond to like some departments and we have to find a unique way to deal with it.

The Safety Board Document update.

Lt Hart, Chief Engmark, and Paul Kite worked on proposed changes the 1^st page refers to reserve division instead of volunteer.
Page 4 permanent ranks 5 eliminated engineer and probationary fire fighter. Engineer is stipend. Appointed ranks Chief and Battalion Chief can be removed to the last permanent rank. Department between 10 and 51 members upper level is the Chief, staff and pay rank is below the Chief.
Butch said we did this because the Deputy Chief is paid at a separate pay rank, we had one policy for one thing and we were doing it a different way. Deputy Chief is rank and pay grade. If we paid the Deputy Chief a stipend. We made it clear in the old one that it is not considered a different one, it is a little odd.
The reason IFD does not do it this way is because they have assistant Chiefs, their Deputy Chiefs are next. All of these can be un-appointed without a hearing.
We have very clear language saying these are appointed positions. Chief Brown has been a division chief and then Chief Thacker was added. We call them Division Chiefs for our department. Chief Cassin said we want change this so Chief Brown and Chief Thacker will be true Division Chiefs and be paid as such, but in order to do this we have to fix the document.
Brian Bosma said we could remove the Battalion Chief today, but Dr. Shufflebarger said let us set this up and create a stipend and their rank will stay the same.
Warren Township Battalion Chiefs are appointed and can be removed at anytime. Chief Slauter said can we set this up so we can remove a Battalion Chief in case we get someone horrible and need to remove him if necessary.
Brian Bosma said if we create a rank until we have 51 members we could not remove an appointment from a Battalion Chief and we are stretching it for a Division Chief. If you give them a rank it is there.
Dr. Shufflebarger said it has to not be a rank. It is a Battalion Chief who is in charge of a division I don’t know if this may be splitting hairs but that’s what it is. That’s what it really is, it’s a Battalion Chief who has an assignment to oversee a division who gets a stipend in order to do that, but it’s still a Battalion Chief. That’s the appointed rank.
Chief Tibbetts ask can we do that and call them a Division Chief. Brian Bosma said if you don’t have a Division Chief you don’t call them a Division Chief and you pay them some stipend or something. You don’t call their rank a Division Chief. Brian Bosma said once we hit 51 then the problem is gone. Brian Bosma said it is not the title, it is their responsibilities that are important, and so we have to do some more work on this thing. Brian Bosma said we have to plug in on it.
There is a typo on page 7 item H because we did say Chief and Division Chief we went back and forth on this as to what was going to end up here. We had Division Chief in, we had Division Chief out as you did this the last time, the last two times, back in 1999 and 2003 and that should actually say Chief and Battalion Chief.
So do you want to stick with Chief and Battalion Chief being the only appointed ranks at this point? I think we do, don’t you, that accomplishes everything you guys, your ability to remove them and if we can do it just like we do the Deputy Chief in terms of this document.
Brian Bosma said again once we get over 51 this problem will go away. The question was asked because of our numbers we are not allowed to create any positions. Brian said we can create the position, the rank of Division Chief that is no problem you can do it today then the only person that you can remove without a hearing, without cause would be the Chief and the Division Chief. The Battalion Chief is tenured, even if it is a temporary rank.
The question was raised is there a document that you sign when you get that rank. Brian Bosma said he is not comfortable with it in all honesty, it happens, but the argument would be that someone can’t sign away their rights to tenure. There is no case law on it. Brian said our Safety Board Policy says okay we are not going to create a rank of Deputy Chief but we are going to designate an individual as Deputy Chief where we can and it’s not separate rank or grade.
Brian Bosma said if we are going to have five Division Chiefs that you are going to call Division Chief and then say it is not a rank that I start getting a little uncomfortable with because it is a rank. If somebody has Division Chief it is pretty hard to say it is not a rank, Deputy Chief is not unlike an assistant Chief if there is just one of them. If there were five of them it would be different.
Dr. Shufflebarger said practically speaking what you are saying is at the top of the pyramid you have a few people that you are able to reassign without hearing. When you have another layer below then now you are over 50 to number it in that group is a marker and I think we are playing word games around it.
Brian Bosma said he would avoid the designation of someone as Division Chief even though he knows we would like to go that direction and I wouldn’t want to put a stipend for Division Chief. If there is a way that someone is a Battalion Chief but they are in charge of the Fire Prevention Division. Brian said it is different if you are working as a Division Chief and we have a rank of Division Chief around here, but we don’t have a rank of Division Chief around here because our safety policy says there is no such thing.
Dr. Shufflebarger said he thinks that is the reason for that pyramid deal, you have to go down a certain way until we are big enough we need to leave it the way it is now.
Chief Slauter said there are checks and balances built into and he is concerned about getting a horrible Battalion Chief that we could not remove.
Brian Bosma says here is a good example Chief Wilson is a Captain appointed to be a Battalion Chief say Chief Wilson performs very poorly over a period of time and the District Board turns to him and says alright Chief Wilson you are no longer a Battalion Chief you are a Captain and I assign you to shovel the back 40. That can happen, if we make this change even though it is called an appointed rank, if there’s a Division Chief rank, Chief Wilson would have to get the point where he has committed one of the seven deadly sins, we have a hearing and go through the steps we have gone through before which we know are not very pleasant.
Dr. Shufflebarger ask for an example if the Chief quit and a new Chief came in next week and he said you know what I like Chief Cassin, but I want one of these other guys to be Deputy Chief, then Chief Cassin goes back to Battalion. If we don’t do it the way that being suggested then we have to stop right there at the senior administration period. If he wanted to change anything within the appointed Battalion rank he couldn’t do it and that’s why we have to do it this way, the proper way to do it.
Brian Bosma said the permanent Battalion Chief can not change, the appointed Battalions you can return them to their last rank or their permanent rank without any cause whatsoever at a whim, if you want to mix things up. It is a transition, a growing pain when you have a small department; you know that IFD mechanism and the mechanism that’s in a lot of the other departments.
The pay scale will be to differentiate between the Battalion Chief pay and what we would consider Staff Battalion Chief pay so it would show them separated. It was decided that was the way to do it.

The Tahoe bid that we have is for $8002.00 for the 1999 White Chevy Tahoe with maroon interior and 63,994 miles. Motion to sell by Jon Raker, 2^nd by Butch Sutton, all in favor and motion carries. The other Tahoe we have advertised twice and it is now declared surplus and will be advertised and sold in the trader or e-Bay. Dr. Shufflebarger made the motion to declare it surplus, 2^nd by Jon Raker, all in favor and motion carries.

Policy amendments. Chief Tibbetts said we have had some meetings on the benefits policy amendments.

The bereavement leave days the policy stated before that you got 1 day and if it is out of state you will be give a 2^nd day. When you are trying to take care of loose ends one day is not enough, so we would like to change that to 2 days and possibly a 3^rd if it is out of state.

i. Brian Bosma said looking at the current benefits policy that has been adopted by the board dated July 1, 2002 and it says you get 24 hours consecutive work time off for a funeral leave. The 24 hours consecutive work time would be 3 separate calendar days for career personnel.

ii. For a shift person they would be off for a full shift and then they would have 2 days before and 2 days after. What has happened on 2 different occasions is the employee was working that day and they got the call that there was a death in the family so they left which left half of that shift uncovered and then it took 3 days after that to make the arrangements. A couple of them were out of state and they just couldn’t physically do it in the time before the next shift. We have run into that multiple times in the last 5 years. It says that an additional consecutive 24 hours not charges against any other leave may be granted at the sole discretion of the Chief if the funeral is out of state. The family members that are covered is spouse, parent, grandparent, child, sister, brother, mother-in-law, father-in-law, and legal guardian.

The second policy involved eliminating the personal leave and perfect attendance day in lieu of adding vacation days. Currently employees receive 2 PL days and 2 PA days per year, policy change we would just add 4 days of additional vacation days. People are coming in very sick to keep from loosing their PA day and make 3 or 4 other people sick. Most the career guys have agreed with this and the majority rules on it and they would like to change that policy.
The Comp-time ceiling should be changed to 120 hours. The amount of people have over that now will be grandfathered in, if they want paid out we will pay them out, but if they just want to take the days off they can take the days off. Butch suggested lets look at it and bring it back.

Chief Cassin distributed the strategic plan. This is 2 ½ years of work. Chief Cassin said to read it as this is our rough draft to project not only the next year but 20 years or farther into the future where’s the department going to be at that time and how are we going to get there.

There are a couple of key components that address certain areas that are extremely important and things like the mission statement and the division statement sets the tone for the whole plan and allows people to see where we see the department going in the future. By having a plan like this it will help us in this group here to be able to make some of the decisions that we have been making and hopefully shed a little more light on things in the future. There are a lot of decisions that we make now that will affect what we want to do or need to do in the future.
One item that needs more attention is the future fire station locations that have always been a big thing cause that involves future fire loans.
Capital projects scheduled and what I am talking about are smaller projects but they are large enough that we need to plan for them things like turnout gear replacement and SCBA replacement.
The biggest one is the apparatus replacement and the schedule for this is in there and it is based on the use life of apparatus. Take the next month to look over it. Cumulative fund by design has been increasing in size 2 years ago when we started this plan the district board itself wants to get away from relying on fire loans. So this fund will be able to replace all rolling equipment.
The 2^nd part of strategic plan is just fiscal work sheets and displays the funds. We wanted to show what would happen after the last fire loan drops off so we will know where we will be setting. If we go by this plan and it shows our predictions we could go out as much as 12 years before we could go back. Every year there is a deposit in the cumulative fund and we will be using money to replace apparatus, the ladder truck is very expensive and this plan allows us to purchase apparatus without getting a loan.
Health insurance was plugged 15%; property tax will be 4.4% it will drop next year to 3.9%. Dr. Shufflebarger asked Chief Cassin what you said is use of the cumulative fund balances will be a self sustaining fund. Turnout gear, building maintenance, and these types of costs are hard to plug into and after doing this it all worked out.
Counter balance is why the fire department needs to maintain balances of a million. We can’t project what will happen to the economy and we have the money in this fund. Right now we are at the lowest point and 1.1 million dollars. If you factor money already spent we have 490,000 as extra cash that we can do what we want with it. Brian Bosma said if we have a large cash balance and go into borrow money, it will look odd that we need to borrow. Steve Dyson said our fiscal plan only goes out to 2010 and then after that we will 1.8 million to spend and then we will have to borrow a million in 2011. Dr. Shufflebarger said we could get through a year or two or three where we could then just borrow for the equipment or move it out a year. If we take 500,000 out of our cumulative fund that would be 500,000 less we would have to borrow. Senate bill 609 passed and part of what it will do is eliminate debt and the cadgit amount will stay the same. We will be better off eliminating debt, because the person who is living off of cadgit will be in trouble and we are not living off of this cadgit. Butch said review this document and then consider how we will act regarding the loan.
Is the strategic plan something the board will adopt? Our goal is to have a plan where we can all answer the same way. We will have a consensus about it, if something is not agreed upon; we can discuss it and change it.
Chief Cassin will send an electronic copy for everyone to review tomorrow.

Chief Cassin asks Dr. Shufflebarger to sign the 100R2 form and he signed it. This should be done every year in January and it is just a standard form that is filed at the county.

Brian Bosma asks how many full time employees we have (35) and part time employees (55).

Dr Shufflebarger and Paul Kite could not attend the meeting set for June 7^th, so the meeting is moved to June 8^th at 7 pm.

Paul Kite read a Thank You note from Chief Tibbetts and Connie Jo for the department’s participation at the passing of Chief Tibbetts mother.

Meeting adjourned at 8:49 p.m. by Dr. Shufflebarger. Next meeting will be Wednesday, June 8, 2005 at 7 p.m.

Minutes submitted by Jackie Emmons, Receptionist