Administrative Control Board work session called to order: 5:31 p.m.

Transcription

1 Park City Fire Service District Work Session Meeting Minutes Fire District Administrative Office Building 736 West Bitner Road, Park City, Utah work session called to order: 5:31 p.m. Board Members Present: Chair Jay Dyal, Vice Chair and Treasurer Michael Howard, Secretary Alex Butwinski, Board Member Christina Miller, and Board Member Tim Henney District Personnel Present: Chief Paul Hewitt Deputy Chief Bob Zanetti BC Pete Emery AC Ashley Lewis FM Mike Owens Captain Sean Briley CFO Del Barney HR Patti Berry Admin. Asst. Debbie Colgan I. County Attorney Fees Chief Hewitt began the meeting by reminding the Board members they are welcome to meet with District personnel prior to meetings to go over any questions they have about any of the topics to be discussed. Regarding County attorney fees, Chief Hewitt said when he first started Rick Sutherland was contacted for any labor issues and the County attorneys were consulted regarding land matters. Beginning last year, the County began charging $24K a year for the use of County attorneys for a variety of matters. The District has taken advantage of this service for many hours of the County attorneys time for matters including but not limited to land purchases, HR issues, and policy review. Chief Hewitt said he knew $24K was an introductory rate, and he has been informed the yearly rate for special service districts will be going up to $40K. He said he has had experience with what fire districts pay for their legal fees, and the new amount is very fair. There is a 5% maximum COLA every year on the $40K. A question was asked if the current contract has been voided, and Chief Hewitt replied it has not yet been voided. An interlocal agreement will be made that will supersede the previous agreement. Chief Hewitt said he will send the interlocal agreement to the Board members for their review. Another question was asked if the County bills hourly, and Chief Hewitt replied they do if they go over the $40K. Jami Brackin and Dave Thomas track their hours. Chief Hewitt commented Jami has been at the District frequently and is very responsive. A suggestion was

2 Page 2 made for the District to track the hours for which they use County attorney services so there is a way to reconcile their hours. Chief Hewitt said he could ask Jami Brackin and Dave Thomas to track their hours and give us an annual report each year. II. PCFD Lot 4 Purchase Chief Hewitt commented the Board has discussed the Lot 4 purchase near Round Valley in closed sessions in the past. The lot has now been subdivided, and the contract reviewed by Dave Thomas and Jami Brackin has been redlined and is almost ready to go. We will be moving forward with the purchase of a 2.5-acre parcel that was subdivided out from the original 5-acre parcel. Chief Hewitt said he will be working with CFO Barney to get payment to the City in a timeframe that works for us. III Tentative Budget and 2018 Budget Amendments CFO Barney presented the Board with the projected 2019 budget and the amended 2018 budget. Regarding interest income in the amended budget, he pointed out the amended budget has gone up by $400K; this is because this year we are getting 2.75% on our PTIF, and last year at this time we were only getting 1.5%. When you keep $11-12M in the capital projects fund, you will have more interest income. Also in the amended budget, impact fees are being raised to $425K; as of today we are already at $403K in collected impact fees, and that does not include money that will come in before the end of the year from plan reviews that have been submitted but have not yet had impact fees assessed. Other permits is going up to $275K; this includes more plan review fees, sprinkler fees, solar panel fees, etc. Under expenses, the only thing that has really changed in the amended budget is under capital outlay. The land amount might change again before the actual budget is finalized because of the land purchase. $1M was taken out of apparatus because even though we bought the ladder truck, it is an asset that will not be realized until next year, when we actually get the truck. The proposed 2019 budget is for $19.871M, which is just under what we proposed last year. If we buy land this year, we will take it out of next year s budget and effectively lower the budget by $1M. For the third quarter, we are currently at 62.9% of our budget, but if we take that $1M out of 2019 and put it in this year, that percentage will jump. We should be at 75% at the end of September, so we are still doing really well in our budget. CFO Barney then said whether a new station is built or not, we will need to go through truth in taxation in There are many new and increasing expenses that dictate we do this, and CFO Barney believes the District will have no problem justifying the increase. If the District does not go through truth in taxation and the new station is built, the District will be out of money in 2025

3 Page 3 or The CPI has gone up 18% since 2009, which gives us about a $1M loss in buying power over that period of time. Our income is staying the same except for new growth, which is only about $ K a year. Our revenues are not catching up with our expenses. Notification of an impending truth in taxation needs to be given by June of the year you are going to do it, which would mean June of It would then take effect in June of Comments were made to take note of when other entities may be having increases or going after bonds, as well. CFO Barney said if we need to move it up to 2019, we can do it. Chief Hewitt said we have plenty of time but it is good to get the discussion started now. CFO Barney said the new Wells Fargo and Zions Bank lease agreements have been prepared. These agreements basically tell the banks that enough money has been put into our budget to pay the bonds next year. Those agreements will be approved in the regular meeting. The bonds will be paid off in 2024 and 2026 for Wells Fargo and Zions, respectively. IV. Chipping Program Chief Hewitt commented the multitude of fires in the west has made people here nervous, it is a serious issue. He and FM Owens have been in talks with several people in the community and some good suggestions have come out of them. One is to relay a stronger message about defensible space and we are working on a mailer for that. Captain Lewis is working with a drone production company on getting a drone with a thermal imaging camera that could be in the air for an extended period of time. All it would be doing is detecting hot spots at a temperature we specify, which would be particularly helpful for lighting strikes at night. The drones would be another suppression tool. FM Owens and Chief Hewitt have been discussing improvements to the chipping program. It started as a very humble project which we spent less than $10K a year on. Over the past few years, residents have begun piling refuse in their driveways with the expectation that PCFD will come and get it. We are increasing our chipping budget next year and Chief Hewitt said he is working with the County on other options, but the chipping program was never intended to be a fully on-call service where we would go to someone s residence at any time. It was meant to be a one-time pass through. We may go to a hybrid program where we would go to individual houses if they get on the schedule and the piles adhere to protocols such as a maximum height, no barbed wire, etc. FM Owens said in the past residents would call to schedule a pick up and we would be there in 1-2 weeks to chip their pile. When the website came online, residents then registered for pick ups and we would get them in about the same timeframe, 1-2 weeks. This past summer we started a circuit where we would concentrate on an area and chip piles registered in that area before moving on to another one. It worked well for the most part and there were a few bugs, but overall it was fine. We had to end the chipping season 2 weeks earlier than planned because we did not have any chippers. It was the earliest we have ended the chipping season but we still chipped roughly the same amount of houses as last year, so the program works. Next year we

4 Page 4 want to refine it even more so we will spend part of the summer doing individual houses, and then at a point to be determined during the summer we will shift our focus to chipping neighborhoods. FM Owens commented after the storm in October, Fire Prevention fielded a number of phone calls regarding people wanting PCFD to come and chip fallen branches. They have the wrong idea about what the program is about. He said the number of homes using the chipping service is remaining about the same every year, but the number of visits to each of those homes is increasing. We have talked about getting more chippers and having an additional crew because this is a valuable service; it reduces the amount of fuel on the hillsides. Chief Hewitt said we cannot mandate defensible space or evacuation drills, but we will continue working with the County to come up with ideas to make our community safe. A recommendation was made to target high-risk neighborhoods, if possible, and make them a priority on the chipping schedule. FM Owens replied mailers will be focused to let residents in certain neighborhoods know PCFD will be in their area and to plan accordingly. Of the roughly 400 houses we chipped this past summer, 188 of those were in the Pinebrook and Summit Park areas. We chipped 133 houses in the Jeremy Ranch area, so the majority of our calls were these higher risk areas. Another recommendation was made to get the HOA managers involved so they can notify residents as well, and FM Owens replied we will continue to have meetings with the HOA boards like we did last year. A question was asked whether we could assess a fee for chipping services, and FM Owens replied he has consulted with the County attorney and we would basically need to charge the equivalent of the market rate for landscape companies. FM Owens commented the District gets a big benefit from this program out of reducing the fuel on the hillsides, and Chief Hewitt added we do not want to compete with local landscapers. V. Workforce Housing Chief Hewitt said he wanted to briefly touch on the land near the fleet services building. There are 19 acres remaining, and he would like the Board to consider the possibility of putting workforce housing on it in the future and adding it into our budget. It is not getting easier to recruit firefighters and having affordable housing would be another good benefit for the District. Tim Henney commented the City is doing something similar with the Prospector condos for transit workers. More to come on this in the future. VI. Task Performance Test and Training Update Chief Emery said the District partnered with the LiVe Well Center in 2012 and we began the task performance test (TPT) in He presented a brief presentation of where suppression personnel are as of this year. In summary, PCFD personnel are at a much healthier weight and

5 Page 5 less obese than at other departments across the nation; our program is working here. In 2014 we had a roughly 80% pass rate on the TPT, and those that did pass had an average passing time of 3:57. The pass rate is 4:04. This year, we have a 100% passing rate and our average passing time is 3:10. We are seeing the benefits of the program now. Chief Emery said when personnel visit the LiVe Well Center for their physical and run through the exercises there, the Center is able to tell the personnel their estimated TPT time within about 10 seconds based on their physical performance. For those who have been at PCFD since 2014, there is now 5 years worth of data at the Center for them to track their progress and identify areas that need improvement. Chief Hewitt commented practicing the TPT helps improve scores. Chief Emery said people are looking to come to Park City because they know we are a strong organization and it is a great recruiting tool. VII. Policy Review Briefly, HR Berry said regarding the policies distributed to the Board for this meeting (Sections 13, 14, and 16) and any other policies the Board has questions or comments on, please forward comments to her so she can begin incorporating changes for final approval later. VIII Ambulance Budget Captain Lewis said the County provides a budget of $2.7M a year to run all three EMS divisions: Park City, North Summit, and South Summit. This year we are asking for additional funds due to some changes we are trying to incorporate. Currently there are two different EMS systems in the County. On the west side (Park City), we have seven fully staffed fire stations with 26 firefighters on duty 24 hours a day, each of which are either advanced EMTs or paramedics and ready to go as soon as the alarm sounds. If someone gets injured in their home, the goal is to be out of the station within 1 minute and at the house within 7 minutes, which is the national standard. Stations have been strategically placed to get our personnel to houses as fast as we can. The other EMS system, which is for North and South Summit, is quite different. There is 12-hour on-duty coverage between 7:00 a.m. and 7:00 p.m. out of Kamas and Coalville every day. However, at night between 7:00 p.m. and 7:00 a.m., the personnel respond from home. For example, in Oakley if someone gets hurt late at night, the call is paged out to community EMTs who are at home. The EMTs need to get out of bed, get dressed, get to their car and possibly defrost it, drive to the Kamas garage to get the ambulance, and wait for their partner to show up. That s about 10 minutes that have elapsed. Add another 6-8 minutes to drive from Kamas to Oakley, and you are looking at about an 18-minute response time. Captain Lewis said the North and South Summit night time response times are minutes on average. For someone who needs immediate medical attention, such as a heart attack victim, that is a long time to wait.

6 Page 6 Captain Lewis said we will be asking for $68K in additional funds from the County Council to fix this, which is feasible. These funds will allow us to go to full 24-hour coverage in Coalville and Kamas. This would allow EMTs to be on duty in the station overnight and eliminate callouts from their homes. There are currently six ambulances for North and South Summit due to the community EMT situation; if we move to 24-hour coverage out of Coalville and Kamas, some of the ambulances and equipment could be sold to offset some of the cost. A question was asked regarding whether am ambulance district could be formed so tax payers could help fund it, and Captain Lewis replied it would likely be met with opposition; from PCFD s point of view, the proposal for going to 24-hour coverage in Kamas and Coalville and asking the County Council for a budget increase is the best scenario. Money from PCFD s budget cannot be used to pay for services in North and South Summit because tax payers in Park City are funding services in Park City, not North or South Summit. A comment was made that the North and South Summit communities will eventually need to decide what level of service they want to have and be willing to pay for some of it. A question was asked whether the community is asking for 24-hour in-station coverage or is it the District wanting to change because of the slower response time, and Chief Hewitt replied he was asked the same question by another County official when discussing this. The short answer is we do not want to wait for someone to pass away because we did not get there in time, so it is our job to suggest what service level they need and make recommendations on what we want to do to fix the slower response time. It is very hard to find volunteers to be on-call for ambulances, and eventually it could mean there are shifts that are not covered at all. In closing, Captain Lewis said the County budget committee allocated a 1.3% increase to most departments, so we will receive $34K of the $68 increase, leaving $34K as the actual additional amount we are asking for. Work Session Concluded: 6:36 p.m.