MINUTES OF THE BUCKSKIN FIRE DEPARTMENT DISTRICT FIRE BOARD

Transcription

1 MINUTES OF THE BUCKSKIN FIRE DEPARTMENT DISTRICT FIRE BOARD May 27, 2015 Work Session Minutes to be approved at open public meeting on July 8, A public Open Meeting of the Buckskin Fire Department was convened on May 27, 2015 at 6:00 p.m. in the training room of the Buckskin Fire Department located at 8500 Riverside Drive, Parker, AZ., The following matters were discussed: 1. Call to Order: Chairman Jeff Daniel called the Work Session to order at 6:00 p.m. 2. Roll Call: Members present: Chairman Jeff Daniel, Greg Bachmann, Robert Monty Rust, Glenda Gerson, Robert Gory Absent: Staff present: Chief Chris Chambers, Pattie Lonnee Administrative Assistant, FF Jason Weatherford Guest Speaker: Public Present: John Mihelich, Pat Jones, Gary Svider, Valerie Hinson, Ryan Atkins, Lu Anne Brown, Wm Brown, Marlene Gerson, Dorothy Durham, Wayne Posy 3. Work Session: (Discussion) 2015/2016 budget: Chairman Daniel turned the floor over to Chief Chambers who opened the discussion regarding Public Safety Retirement. To make you aware the first major change is with our workman s comp. We did receive a decrease but it is not the decrease we would like. Travelers and NCCI still have not figured out the $300,000 mistake. The total decrease is just under $24,000. That is with Travelers. We are still waiting on the SCF. We currently do not know anything yet. We are also working with a few places in Havasu for workman s comp. The good thing about workman s comp is if we have to stay with Traveler s we can switch at anytime, it just depends on when NCCI can change our ratings. They are currently working on it. Pattie: The gentleman from Travelers had said the NCCI does change our experience modifications that they will actually make an adjustment to the rate, retroactive. He sent an inquiry to them on that payroll and we are waiting to hear back and that was yesterday. Bob Gory asked if we paid it quarterly or monthly? Pattie responded it is actually with worker s comp the premium, when our policy renews which is July 1 st, we have a down payment we have to make and then from there on we make I believe 10 or 11 installments, so it is monthly. Bob Gory: is that down payment like a percentage? Pattie: It is 25% of the annual gross premium and then the balance is spread out equally over 11 installments. Jeff Daniels: So how you have it right now Chris it is showing $129,548 somewhere around there. Pattie: That is what we have been quoted as of right now. Chief Chambers: That is down from the $152,000 and then there are two things that we would like to change, the turnout gear is line 646 and that has been at $4500 and we are talking about replacing the turnout gear a couple sets a year as we go so we do not have to buy all of them again and we went out and received bids with the money we have left at the end of this year and two complete sets are going to be really close to $6,000. I would like to increase that line item by $1500. We had cut it down last year and we had figured on buying one set but I do not think one set is going to be enough to start building us back up. Jeff Daniels: Can we go back to line 626 medical. I thought it was going to be the

2 $177,341? Chief Chambers: We have to discuss that also. That is a big one, it was like a $3,000 change. What we did there was we had the dental rate wrong. Pattie: It was my mistake and when I was looking at the quote from EMI for the dental it was not the correct amount and so when I was questioning to make sure with EMI what the rate was based on the coverage is when I realized that I had written down the wrong numbers. I did a recalculation and where as I thought the dental was $4400 or something close to that, just about $4500 a year it was $7300, so it is a $3157 difference. Jeff Daniel: Isn t this the worksheet that EMI had given us and this is what they quoted us? Pattie: That is medical. Jeff Daniel: Medical insurance/dental isn t that the same. That s not even including the dental then? Pattie: No that is not including dental. Chief Chambers: The dental was through Principal. Pattie: No the dental that we had was through Principle and it was higher and it is still higher and we had got a quote from EMI and I thought that the amount per employees since Buckskin only pays for the employees and not the dependents. I picked up the wrong number, so there was a difference of roughly, I don t know what it was off the top of my head, I would have to go look but I think I was looking at a number that was quoted at $34/$35 per employee and it is actually $43 and Principle is $46 but it will go up in September when the open enrollment is due for Principle. Chief Chambers: That was a change and also we did not know that on our Blue Cross Blue Shield policy had a life insurance that was not BCBS. Pattie: There is a life insurance policy that is billed through BCBS on their invoice but it is through a separate company and it is $4.95 per employee, per billing cycle and so I added that number as well. Chief Chambers: That is $ a year for the life insurance, for all the members. Jeff Daniel: Is that just for the members or the family also? Pattie: No just for the members. Chief Chambers: In case there is a problem. Jeff Daniel: What is there payment? Pattie: It is $15K. It is accidental, death and life. Chief Chambers: The mandated cancer we did get but we have had BCBS for so many years we did not know it was a separate line item. For the workman s comp were pretty much going to be set on this number. Pattie: I have the bid and I actually have the amount for the down payment. Chief Chambers: Even if we stay with Travelers it should come down some more when they fix our NCCI rate. Even then they will give us that money back and if it goes to SCF or one of the other ones it could come down another $25K on top of that. We just do not know yet. Even with our zero accidents in the last 3 years, our rating came down quite a bit. Those are the changes Jeff and I put them on here for discussion because we cannot do anything tonight. Those are the increases so far. Bob Gory: That $300K is that for everything in the green? Pattie: Yes. Chief Chambers: The medical and the workman s comp and the cancer mandate. Bob Gory: There is dental in there too? Pattie: Yes in the 626. If you look at the GL in the far left side 626 medical/dental. That includes the dental. Chief Chambers: Yes because it was quoted at $185,000/$196,000 and then we did the EMI and it went up $177,341 but we had miscalculated the dental and left off the life insurance. With the dental and the life insurance it went up $3,000. Greg Bachmann: Going back to the workman s comp you said Pattie that we make a 25% payment with company A, so if we go with company B we ve already made a 25% payment. Pattie: No I would think that if you cancelled your policy you get a refund. Right? Greg Bachmann: Well I don t know, that is why I m asking. Pattie: I have not asked them, I want to see if we get a bid that solid because I do not want them canceling us. Jeff Daniel: If you cancel they are not going to give you, your full money back. They are going to give you a percentage back but that is what we need to find out. Chief Chambers: Obviously we would wait until that money ran out. Pattie: I am actively working with other insurance companies and reaching out to Copper Point and recently just working with the agency in Havasu also, giving him information that he needs to try and do some research, see if he can give us some quotes. I am hopeful but there isn t anything so far that indicates

3 anything solid. Chief Chambers: Chairman if you want to go back, if you would like to listen to the PSPRS, because I know there were questions or we can do that at the end, it does not matter. Those are the changes we have made so far. We have had a decrease in the workman s comp and an increase in those two line items. If the turnouts, taking them up $1500 will give us two full sets next year and if you do not want to do that we can always take it out of a contingency or something like that. With those changes, that we have right here, our tax rate will go down to $3.13. Then we will not know until the beginning of next month depending on when we meet again and if we meet for the final budget on the 8 th, then we should have a really good idea of what our ending number is going to be in our roll over because our roll over looks to be more than this $65,000. If we can get our roll over up to $100,000 then there s a really good chance we can get the tax rate down to $3.00 or possibly below it. Right now we don t know, finally we got back some workman s comp stuff but we don t have the final numbers. We can guess what our payroll and items like that are going to be but we won t know until basically the 1 st of June. Jeff Daniel: Can we go back up top here and this has been bothering me quite a bit. To our benefits and retirement expenses and I know we have gone over it probably six different directions. I still don t feel that what we are putting in there the $365,000 and some change is going to be enough to offset our big huge pension deficit that we have to pay back. How are we possibly going to put back, we are putting in $30,000 for payroll for our pension, for our retirement pension is $336,121 and we are putting in $365,840. Chief Chambers: Here is a contribution requirement, this will help everybody. Bob Gory: What is this? Can you explain this? Chief Chambers: This is part of the tape that I was going to explain. This is contribution requirements. This shows us what we paid for 2013 and what we re going to pay for It tells you exactly where those contributions, how they re dulled out in the 42% that we are going to pay over the year. At the top where it says pension normal costs requirements service pension. That is normally the retired people. It actually went down a bit but it s 14.63% disability, pension and it goes right on down. The total number of the first is 18.89% and that s for service pension, disability, pension survivor of active numbers and refunds of members of accumulated contributions and he s going to talk whenever you are ready but also that takes into account that if someone wants to pull out that has been in there 10 years that already takes that into account, the money they would take out of their public safety retirement. Jeff Daniel: I understand that part but I am just making a statement for record that I still don t feel the amount that we re putting in is going to be enough to pay off our retirement or pension. What are we $3.8 or $4.2 million deficit? Greg Bachmann: Well based on the current actuary, it could go up or down depending on the economy and everything, there are so many factors. That s one of the things I suggested we take a look at, doing it over the next several years. As long as we can as a fire board find other means outside of the tax levy, which I know of three or four that we can tap in to pay and I would suggest $25,000 this year because I know it is not a good year then maybe years down the road when things look up we can do a little more. $24,000 extra to start paying that down. If we do $25,000 a year based on their 71/2% they say we are going to ring in that s up in the air too. Some years you re going to lose money and some years you re going to gain money, depending on what the investments do. We should end up somewhere in the neighborhood of cutting that deficit by almost $3,000,000 by putting in $25,000 every year. That s got to be above and beyond what we are paying out. So if we are paying out $320,000 and we are putting in $318,000 then we are going to have to make that difference so it would have to be $27,000. Jeff Daniel: If you just do $25,000 times 10 is $250,000, even if you did 10%, you re only talking $25,000 you re not even close to being a half a million dollars. In 20 years it would come down maybe a mill. Greg Bachmann: I m figuring out what they figured out, at 71/2% that s how they figured

4 the actuary. According to them if you take what we have in the funded part which is roughly $300 and something thousand dollars and we add $25K a year times 71/2% and every year your write $25,000 in 22 years following the numbers down, we are going to be just under $3,000,000. Again that s a ballpark. We may get, probably get less than 71/2% at least over the next couple years, especially if there is a drop in the market. We re going to start billing, we can use part of the Wildland money that doesn t come from the tax levy, we can look at the grants that we get and charge an indirect fee, that a lot of the grants allow and if years happen to get better for some reason, we can put more in, maybe we can draw less if we get it back up there, maybe the tax levy 42% will drop. Chief Chambers: I believe paying it up front is one of the things they suggested but I think listening to this tape might answer some questions because basically that s the question I ask about the 42%. Is what does it pertain too and does it pertain to our liability? Listening to tape. Greg Bachmann: Well, one of the reasons we got in this is because we trusted them all of these years. They are the actuary s and they re the ones that said this is rate we need to pay. Now we find ourselves potentially upping the tax rate, the tax levy and everything else. I understand what he s saying but I don t know if I am 100% trusting in the retirement board. If we can put extra in and get Pattie to get that 42% down and get that to 37%-31% whatever we were at back up and start climbing. Barry Gerson: Seems to me that the last board meeting we had, Greg you brought up that by adding two firemen over the chief hiring these part timers, they would be putting in $19,000 a piece, which would amount to $38,000 into the retirement more than what we have here verses two part timers that we are spending $8,000, which is $36,000, so that is a $2,000 savings and I am wondering why the board hasn t requested the chief make that savings and this would directly affect your pension because you would be putting an additional $19,000. That s my comment. Pat Jones: I have a quick comment. I was just on the bank rate and if you deposit approximately $25,000 every year and 7.75% interest rate for 22 years, your total saving would be $1.3 million. I don t think we re contributing enough personally. Greg Bachmann: We may not be, like I said the $25,000 is going to do that, I just think that s a good starting point for the next couple years and see how the economy goes and what we re going to be able to do and see where the numbers go. If it improves in our favor we can hopefully lower our tax rate on that expenditure and if we need to kick it up, we need to find other ways to kick it up. Chief Chambers: Well with that if we happen to get this Safer Grant with the additional 12 people they ll only be on here for 2 years and so it will be additional 12 people paying into Public Safety Retirement. Monty Rust: Do you think we are going to raise the turnout gear or leave it at the $4500 and find the money elsewhere? Chief Chambers: Technically you could pull the money out of one our reserve accounts or a contingency or we can lower the contingency by $1500 and raise that to $6,000 I mean there are a lot of different things we could do. Monty Rust: I would like to get that one out of the way. Chief Chambers: I would like to change that one because then it doesn t show $4500 and if I spend $6000, then it shows we re negative $1500 and then there is going to be questions, why did you over what is budgeted? I would rather change that line item and then change something else. Greg Bachmann: Are turnouts something we could get out of a grant? Chief Chambers: You could possibly get them out of the fire fighter grant but we have only received it once and that was for the tender. Well I can t say that because have also received it for the monitors, $105,000 for that. Where it s hard is that you have to prove your budget is a hardship for turnouts, so you have to send them your budget and say alright why can t you do a 10 year loan for turnouts at $4000 a year. It s not saying we can t put in for it but now it s been 5 years since you initially bought the turnouts for everybody and so we

5 are getting some that are deteriorating and like Jason burnt his up last year so we had to purchase new ones. We are getting to the point now where we need to start sending some into Vegas to get fixed. We have been going out and getting bids, for roughly helmets, boots, full set of turnouts, suspenders, gloves and everything. It was really close to $3,000. The alliance brand was close to $4500 and this other brand was $2300. They have a 10 year life span so whether they re new or not and 10 years you have to take them out of service. Greg Bachmann: Not the tax rate or percentage but dollars on the tax levy, how much is the budget going up this year or requesting to go up this year verse last year? Jeff Daniel: Well last year was $1,687, and were going to $1,823, Greg Bachmann: What percentage is that? Chief Chambers: Just our Public Safety Retirement was $140,000. Pat Jones: My point is, it s gone up again. Just keeps going. When the board came into place it was at what? $167K. We haven t in placed any tax base for the tax payers. Our whole actual DR S for calls, when you check the DR S hasn t increased hardly at all but we keep going up. It s 7.4%, it s about 136 increase from last year. Chief Chambers: If you look at the years, we ve cut salaries, we ve cut positions. Jeff Daniel: Well we ve cut positions but we ve raised salaries. Chief Chambers: Well we have cut the cost of salaries but yes, you did give them a raise last year. We cut Assistant Chief, we cut a complete fire fighter position to cover anyone who was hurt. Greg Bachmann: And you re proposing to hire to full time and not using part time. Chief Chambers: Yes, and so with that if we run the part time it is $18,000 a year in savings but like the Public Safety Retirement said the difference is if you save that money, if you turn around and put that $36,000 into Public Safety Retirement then that would help but if we hired the two people, it s going to put $19,000 into Public Safety Retirement. For two additional people it s going to cost the department $36,000 but that s if we run them for all 12 months. With that $36,000 were actually putting $38,000 into retirement and the reason being is you re not paying social security and Medicare. Jeff Daniel: I am not for this budget here but just going through these are just rough numbers. Just for benefits from previous year to this year, we are approximately $102,000 up and that is including our sick, retirement/pension, and holiday pay. So think of it as a retirement expense. Our payroll has gone up and these are a rough number about $4000. Our personal insurance went up about $14,000. No change in the vehicle, uniform stuff, small equipment all that, which that is possibly where we could take a look at because it was exactly where is was last year verses this year. Our EMS and operations it training, that actually went down $6,000. So our bottom line without the rest of our operations expenses we re up about $64,000. I would like to look at some of the stuff that we could possibly take a look at to make some changes, some of the stuff we can t like insurance, the retirement, that kind of stuff. John Mihelich: What suggestions does the board have? Jeff Daniel: Vehicle expenses, nothing has changed John, $42, a year. That s what did last year, the year prior to that it was the exact same thing. We haven t cut anything. John Mihelich: I agree with your number evaluation but what are you looking at as far as discontinuing. You re going to have to get rid of an asset, in order to drop that number. Jeff Daniel: That s possible. John Mihelich: But what suggestions does the board have? Jeff Daniel: I m just making a statement. That s something that all five of us need to look at. We may not be able to. Vehicle expense you have fuel, oil and vehicle maintenance. John Mihelich: You just need to look at the details and look at what we got that we can surplus and get rid of and take it off the books. I m just saying why couldn t we cut down $5,000 or $3,000. Chief Chambers: Here s the deal, you can cut it down but the reason it stayed the same all of those years is because we went back with history on what we needed. Pat Jones: The board does not run the day to day operations. The board is responsible for this entire district. The board s responsibility is to tell the administrative staff they come up with their proposed budget and they say this is still too high. It s not

6 the board s responsibility to tell Chief Chambers where to cut. Chief Chambers: We need to make an educated decision on where to cut. Whatever we save at the end of each year, my goal isn t to spend this entire budget, my goal save everywhere we can. So what we save is our roll over and it does help the tax levy and it does help the people. We always get compared to the sanitary district in taxes. The sanitary district not only collects levy tax income but they also have a fee. So I grabbed a couple numbers, Bob you were right. You pay more for Buckskin Fire than you do for the sanitation district. Jeff you paid more for the sanitary district than for Buckskin Fire. I paid more for the sanitary district than I did for Buckskin fire. Someone brought up that we did not get taxes from Havasu Springs, so I let them know we absolutely get taxes from Havasu Springs. It was suggested by one of the board members how we can save a little bit or any amount. Well were are hopefully hiring those two people. If we do not hire them right away, if we go through a hiring process, It s basically $1500 a month we would save per each person for benefit package. Even if you approve both positions, I don t know that I would go straight out and fill both positions without going through a hiring process especially at this point. 4. Adjourn 7:20pm 5. Call to Order: 6. Roll Call: Members present: Chairman Jeff Daniel, Greg Bachmann, Robert Monty Rust, Glenda Gerson, Robert Gory Absent: Staff present: Chief Chris Chambers, Pattie Lonnee Administrative Assistant, FF Jason Weatherford Guest Speaker: Public Present: John Mihelich, Pat Jones, Gary Svider, Valerie Hinson, Ryan Atkins, Lu Anne Brown, Will Brown, Marlene Gerson, Dorothy Durham, Wayne Posy (Action Item): Discussion & possible action to Approve, adopt and publish Budget FYE 2015/2016-Greg Bachmann makes motion to table this item until our June 8 meeting. Monty Rust seconds motions. No further discussion. Motion to table item #7 to June 8, 2015 was approved unanimously. Ayes:5 Nayes:0 Call to the Public. Valerie Hinson: On April 13 th, 2015 I turned in a request and I have not received a request yet. I got a letter from Pattie stating she would be happy to do my request and she would be able to get it to me as soon as possible. I would like to know when I can come and pick up my request. Chief Chambers: If you would like to come in tomorrow Valerie, I can have that worksheet for you by 10:00am. John Mihelich: I d like to say Thank you for having a good meeting. I think some place you have a set of bi-laws for your board. Somehow we need to institutionalize so that when this board is gone and the next board comes in that we do not ignore our requirements for training in classes, we do not ignore our requirements to review the financial reports that come up and we pay close attention to the pension. Some place it s got to be written down, it should have been written down when the board got started because this would have been easy to work 2 or 3 years ago. Easy. Jeff Daniel: The board already knows what their responsibilities are. Poll Board Members for Items. Budget. Glenda Gerson; would like to work with Chief Chambers to get stories for the newspaper. Chief Chambers: We are up and running on the billing process, I will update you more next meeting. Retirement system and how

7 we re going to attack that. Jeff Daniel: Can we get a representative from the pension board to discuss the pension. Schedule next work Session and/or regular session; set date and time. June 8 th, :00pm Adjourn: 7:30pm Jeff Daniel; Chairman Date Kayla Anderson 6/24/15 Office Assistant Date Minutes approved by: Date: Minutes approved by: Date: