HomeMy WebLinkAbout2001 05-16 Joint Rural Fire CommissionMeridian City Council / Rural Fire Commission Joint Meeting / Workshop May 16, 2001
The joint meeting/workshop of the Meridian City Council and the Rural Fire Commission was called to order at 6:30 P.M. by President Keith Bird.
Members Present: Keith Bird, Cherie McCandless, and Ron Anderson.
Members Absent: Mayor Robert Corrie, and Tammy de Weerd.
Others Present: Steve Bravo, Mike Ingram, Ken Bowers, Joe Silva, Will Berg, Bill Nichols, Lance Smith, bill Allen, Scotty Kiesig, Howard Miller, Jason Rae, Jon Thompson, Reggie Edwards,
Blake Campbell, Steve Gerpler, and Sam McEny.
Item 1. Roll-call Attendance:
O Tammy de Weerd X Ron Anderson
X Cherie McCandless X Keith Bird
O Mayor Robert Corrie
Bird: We’ll call this special joint meeting/ workshop between the Meridian City Council and the Meridian Rural Fire Protection District Commissioners. Notice is hereby given that this
City Council, the City of Meridian and the Meridian Fire Protection District Commissioners will hold a special joint meeting/workshop at Meridian Fire Station at 540 east Franklin Road,
Meridian Idaho on Wednesday May 16, 2001 at 6:30 P.M. The will meet to discuss the evaluation of the Meridian City Rural Fire Department. I will call that meeting for the city together
and let you know that Councilman Anderson, Councilwoman McCandless and Councilman Bird are here.
Ingram: I call the special joint meeting of the Meridian Rural Fire Commission District joint to the City of Meridian together. It is 6:39 P.M. May 16, 2001. Commissioners Bravo and
Ingram are present. This is to be held as an informational meeting. This is not a Public Hearing.
Bird: With that I’ll turn it over to Fire Chief Ken Bowers and he can introduce the guest.
Item 3. Presentation of the Fire and Emergency Services Evaluation and Customer Centered Strategic Plan: Presentation by Chief Ken Bowers and Joe Parott
Bowers: Well, as you know we’ve been working on this evaluation and study of the Meridian Fire Department. Emergency Services Consulting Group took on this project. Joe Parott was able
to venture down several times and interview you
people, interview the people in our public, in our districts, interview firemen. I don’t know who else he interviewed, quite a few people. This is kind of the wrapping of the ballpark
project that we had done. He’s gave us great work here to work from for future City Council people, for future Rural Commissioners and future Fire staff, administrative people to work
from. It’s going to be a pretty simple book to follow to get us into the future. So, right now I’d like to turn it over and introduce Joe Parott. (inaudible) Thank you Joe. Good job.
Parott: Thank you. It’s good to be back. Okay. This is specific to the process that we’ve gone through to get to this point. (inaudible) Go through it and then I’ll turn it back over
to Ken to talk about the details. Back in late 99 and early 2000 (inaudible) Chief and his staff and a variety of other people developed essentially a 360 degree evaluation of the fire
department. How it’s providing service. How well it’s providing service and (inaudible) We noted a number of things, organizational issues (inaudible) training program and safety issues,
improvement in selection. Things that really need to be taken care of, financial issues like (inaudible) We looked at community outreach programs, prevention programs and made a series
of recommendations on those. And looked particularly at the delivery system. We noted very clearly that this has been and will continue to be a rapidly growing area. That a single fire
station is woefully deficient in terms of serving to any kind of standard of performance. In fact response times, other performance indicators told us that certainly some improvements
were warranted and we recommended those to you including additional stations, additional staff. But most, first and fore most, be willing to sit down and think about just how good you
want this fire department to be and come up with a set of performance objectives that would give guidance tot the fire department and give guidance to you as you plan your budget strategy
(inaudible). On how to make the improvements to the level that you want to see this department performing. We followed with the evaluation activity of what the community centers Strategic
Plan development process. We say customer centered strategic plan because it is that focussed on the needs of the customer both external and primarily external but as well as internal.
We gathered the thoughts and ideas of the community. We first tried to do some focus group sessions. Attendance in that was pretty (inaudible) so we stepped back and did plan B which
was a series of printed surveys and got a very good response from that. We asked the community to tell us what their service priorities were and they were very clear that fire suppression
and medical services were the top things they wanted this department to be very, very good at. Then there were a number of other services that they thought were important. We asked them
to define expectations. Just what is it they expect from the organization. Their comments, most frequently said, rapid response. When we asked them to define that a little more closely,
the majority were saying that within the city they would expect to see a fire truck at their doorstep within 3 to 5 minutes form the time they place the call. In rural area between 5
and 8 minutes from the time they place the call. We know from our own analysis that the department is not providing that public service at this point. We’ve got a gap between customer
expectation and (inaudible) delivered. They also that well trained staff and having enough of the right kind of quality equipment was very, very important as well as them other things.
We asked them to share their concerns. Typically concerns were expectations not met and sure enough, the fact that they’re going on a single station and the (inaudible) slow response
time topped the list. They are concerned about the lack of personally and they were very concerned how the community’s growth was impacted the fire department. (inaudible) to keep pace
with it. They also had some positive things to share about the staff. They appreciate that the fact that the department is working on the (inaudible) growth issues. They also defined
the personnel in the department as being professional and caring. A tribute to you guys for doing good work. Following the gathering of the external info, we put together an internal
planning group which essentially was a cross section of the organization and administration, union representation, volunteer participation as well as others to define a whole bunch of
things that is essentially being proposed to you tonight. Including mission statement, what is the purpose of your organization, why in fact do you exist, a vision when this organization
is what they want it to be what would that look like and values which are essentially how the organization (inaudible) and things they hold important in terms of (inaudible). The group
worked through a Swan analysis, which essentially is an identification of strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. They came up with a very exhaustive list in all four categories
which then were translated into okay, if this is a weakness then how do we solve the problem? Or solution statements. The group worked through not only their own Swan analysis but they
took the information that was gained from the external customer survey and the recommendations from our evaluation and developed ultimately a series of goals, objectives, critical tasks,
prioritized those objectives and developed a set of performance objectives. To talk about what exactly those goals (inaudible)
Bowers: First off I’d like to acknowledge and thank the city staff, the rural commissioners, the firemen, fire fighters, the business people and the people in our community that took
the time to fill out the studies. We had well over hundreds of questionnaires that we handed out and we got them all back (inaudible). It was unreal. Joe has kind of preceded now all
the evaluations that he will be doing. Possibly in the future using this type of a written question and answer type of a deal. At our forum that we had, or whatever you want to call
it, our little meeting in the community we only had five people show up. We wasn’t going to get much of an input or output basically from those people so we had to go to a question and
answer. I really want to thank those people that helped out. Also the planning group. We spent many days down here at the police academy going through different scenarios, different
goals and objectives for the fire department. I’d like to thank those people right now at this time, Jamie Allen, Ken Wellborn, Jim Anderson, Jeff Murray, Lance Smith, Nick Coral, Reggie
Edwards, Jon Thompson, Roy Peckham, Joe Silva, Scott Kiesig, Bill Allen and myself. I really want to thank you guys for spending the time that we did down at the academy. Basically,
if you go to page 11 of your book now. This is basically our
mission statement that we came up with at the Meridian City Rural Fire Department : dedicated to excellence in serving and protecting our community. We thought if we went with something
a little shorter people would be able to remember it. Be able to explain to people what it means, so we picked a little shorter one. It hits it right on the head. We want to serve and
protect our community. The next page, channel 1s, page 12 it takes out our mission statement that we went through and 13 is our values for a customer in our area. Then if you turn to
page 25, basically these are our goals and objectives that we worked on for three days there. Basically we divide them up into five different goals. Our number one goal is to provide
quality service to the community and the committee that we had picked out 11 objectives underneath this goal one. We give them a rating, an A, a B, a C, or a D. Basically what that means
is how soon, how critical did we think we needed to work on these objectives. Did we need to do it within a one to two year period? Three to four year period? Five to six year period?
We gave them an A, B, C, or D. So, the As as you see through here are very critical that we think we need to work on within a year, a year and a half. Basically the objectives, 1A, develop
a plan to identify, adopt performance objectives and targets. Then as you see down there, it shows an A, which means really, really critical that we need to work on this and we gave
it a time limit of 2003 that we think we should be able to do this. As you go down through the bullets, down through there, develop accurate projection of future growth within the community.
That’s the biggest thing that we really worked on through the days with the community. How can we project how many people we’re going to have within the next five to ten years. As Joe
found out, through the study, through the Planning and Zoning that possibly we could have 80,000 people here in that short time. So, that’s what we’re going to have to shoot for is to
take care of 80,000 people in the near future. We need to develop a long term station location plan. Where are we going to put these stations in the future to cover most of our area
within a certain time period? And ensure that the City and district’s long term financial planning process is going to be able to take care of our needs in the future. That’s a little
harder for us to do. But, as long as we can show the City and the Rural that we’re going to need to build a station in this certain year and we’re going to need to bring on more personnel
and we’re going to have to bring on another engine, that the City and Rural can be planning for that in advance. Instead of me coming in October and saying hey we need to build a station
in January. You’re going to ask us please redo that and come back in another (inaudible). So, basically that’s working with you guys, planning for the future. Objective 1B basically
develop the department role into our county disaster plan. We gave this a time C, January 2006. Basically what this is (inaudible) by on-going training on max casualty plans, work with
the city, Ada County, disaster people down there to help us out. Work with them on any kind of disaster, if we got an earthquake or a big windstorm, or anything coming through here.
We would need to work with them and fill into their gaps.
Unidentified: Let me interrupt real quick. As you’re going through this, this is a workshop. (inaudible) questions or comments or you want to talk about
(inaudible) or something like that. If you don’t agree with it or you agree with the direction it’s headed in. This would be the time (inaudible).
Unidentified: Do you have another book?
Bowers: No, I don’t.
(inaudible discussion)
Bowers: Okay. Then 1C we put that as an A priority, July 2001. What this is, high Bill. This is to complete our hazardous material training, to bring everybody up to the operational
level. We have done that. Now we just need to develop a plan to get everybody re-certified every year in that hazardous material training. 1D, develop and provide quality training to
all personnel. We gave this a B priority, January 2005. A lot of this stuff we have really already started but we just need to put down on paper and come up with a plan. We’ve developed
a mentor program for the new firefighters that are coming on, for the new part timers that come on. We team them up with somebody and they go through every truck, how to fill bottles
and the whole works, air bottles. How to work all the equipment basically. Try to develop a career educational plan for all personnel. Where do they want to be in a few years? Do they
want to train for being a Captain? Train for being a battalion Chief? They train to be just a driver? That way we can figure out their educational plans for the future. Objective 1E,
basically develop a partnership with the post academy right down here. We have done that very well. We have used the academy down there on several occasions for our training. We have
taken people down for ladder training down on their buildings down there, extrication. We’re working out a program with the academy. Yes, go ahead.
Unidentified: Quite often when I see these, (inaudible) these objectives. They also have (inaudible) to sign them. (inaudible) Is there anything in your plan that would indicate (inaudible)?
Bowers: Yes there is. I didn’t see that in here but we did put a plan together. Like if Joe and I was going to do that plan or if it was going to be Scotty and the team. We did have
that but I didn’t see that in here. Yeah we do have a plan whose going to be doing that either management or full time firefighters or part timers.
(inaudible discussion)
Bowers: 1F, develop and maintain pre-instant plans for target hazards in our community. Basically what this is develop plans for our power plants, our Idaho Power plants in our district,
the big shopping malls, big buildings in town basically. Where we’re going to have a problem. Where we’re going to have a big fire one of these days, or a big emergency. Maybe just not
a fire but an emergency, a wall to collapse or a roof collapse or something like that. That is one of our priorities. We gave it an A and we need to develop a plan how we’re
going to take care of that by March 2003. Objective 1G basically, expand our working relationships with neighboring public safety. Ensure that our mutual aid and automatic aide agreements
with the neighboring fire departments are kept up to day and went through, if we need to change anything, if we need to change our response area that we’re going to go into or their
response time will come into us. We need to make sure that our mutual aide agreements are kept updated. Also working with Meridian police department, Ada county sheriff’s office and
Idaho state police. I believe it’s getting better as we work with the Ada county Sheriff’s department. There for a while we was having a little problem with they wanted us not to park
our trucks in the way because they’re in the business of keeping traffic going all the time. We’ve gone to their supervisors and their commanders and said, you know these fire trucks
are pulled into a certain area to protect the firemen as they’re working on a patient or a car wreck. I think the Ada County Sheriff’s office has been coming around and working with
us a lot more. 1H basically, the next page, develop a long range networking plan to purchase equipment with other departments and training with other departments. Basically Meridian
gas pipelines we have running through here. We have the big gas lines coming through here. Idaho Power, water rescues, trench rescues and identify other special needs. We have been doing
that this year. We’ve had Idaho Power come in. We’ve had the gas line people come in. So, we’re working with them much better than before. Purchasing equipment with other departments.
We get a much better price if we order 100 or 200 of things instead 10 or 20. If we could purchase with other departments it cuts our price down on our purchases so it works a lot better.
1J, develop a plan to hire six fire fighters. We have done that. We’ve already hired them. We’ve went through the academy already. Also, another bullet down here was complete extensive
background checks and complete medical examines on them. We have put that into effect. Everybody who comes on gets a background check and a physical. Yes, Keith.
Bird: Along that line, do the firemen, a full time fireman and the volunteer firemen have to have a yearly physical? Or do they have a physical PT tests or anything during the year?
Bowers: What we do is, we try because of the expense, we’re trying to get everybody in to get a physical every two years. Every two years. One of these days we hope to get that back
down to one year. But, we’ve discussed it with the doctors. A lot of the times, most of our people are quit young so they thought we could get by with two years. As our people grow older
we will have to probably drop that down to one year.
Bird: How about PT test?
Bowers: No, not at this time. We do not have that.
Bird: Do other fire departments have –
Bowers: Some of them do. Yes. Some of them don’t. Other departments have had that into effect for many years. Like other departments they do not do that. We would sure like to develop
something with our people.
(inaudible discussion)
Bowers: Yeah. We do every day they have an hour that they can work out, lift weights, stretch, things like that. 1K basically is develop a plan, a timeline to hire a deputy chief which
we will be doing. The applications are out June 2nd. So, we will be getting all the applications for that.
Unidentified: We already hired our fire prevention chief.
Bowers: Yes, we did. We moved him over. Yeah that, scratch that out and put training back in there this time.
Bird: Does the new guy get Joe’s car and Joe gets his?
Bowers: Exactly.
(inaudible discussion)
Bowers: And we’re going to move him to the littler office.
Bird: Oh, okay.
Anderson: Kenny, I have another question on these objectives.
Bowers: Yes.
Anderson: Some of these, I’m already looking and circumstances have changed. Like Joe’s promotion –
Bowers: Yes.
Anderson: -- unilateral transfer. What is the process for updating this plan? When circumstances do change to adapt the plan to those changes?
Bowers: Okay. What Joe, he could help me remember this. What he suggested is that we get this committee together again within a 6 months time, I believe it was. I’m not sure if he did
put a time limit on it.
(inaudible discussion)
Bowers: Coincide with the budget process. To go through this and update anything that needed to be updated or if we’ve already done that process or that
program, taken care of that project, or if we are at another project and we’re not going to be able to meet the date, that we could update our process. What we will need to do now, is
since we present this to you then we would need to meet again as a committee and go through this and see if these are our goals and objectives for this next year, that we can meet the
goals.
(inaudible discussion)
Anderson: (inaudible) Say you’ve identified these as goals, you’ve identified them as priority. You’ve identified who’s responsible. What’s your mechanism if they don’t take place,
if they don’t occur?
Bowers: We don’t have anything yet in line to do that to my knowledge. We would just have to get our committee together again and go through it again and try to (inaudible) and let you
guys know that something is changing. I don’t have anything in process right now to do that, Ron. (inaudible)
Parott: Ultimately what we hope will happen is that you as a Council and you as a board adopt these plans. Adopt it as a policy document, which essentially then makes it marching orders
from (inaudible). This is what you will have accomplished and holds him accountable for that. Conversely that adoption comes with a commitment on your part to do your level best to make
sure that he has the resources to make that possible. Now, it is written on paper. It’s engraved in stone. There will be times when you as policy makers simply can’t fund a particular
item. At that point and time the plan needs to be modified and dates changed and whatever the activity is adjusted to fit your funding or be delayed until that funding is available.
If Chief, in fact comes up against road blocks that he can’t control he needs to report that back to you. Saying we had intended to do this. You had directed me through the adoption
of this plan to do this. But (inaudible) circumstances that make that not possible. There’s a consequence (inaudible) So this should be by design and living breathing document that it
is subject to adjustment at your approval (inaudible). We only recommend that one major update plan be done each year just before the budget process so that this can become the basis
for both the financial plan, which is the budget and implement the strategic plan.
Anderson: Thank you. And that’s kind of what I was hoping to get out of – the whole purpose of this document is to have a development plan for our fire department. If we’re already
going to be having objectives that are outdated, we’re not going to be able to accomplish for 6 months or 12 months. The plan is useless and might as well be put on a shelf or in a trash
can. I didn’t spend the money for this survey and all the work and effort that has gone into this (inaudible). I definitely want to go back to see the plan followed through and updated.
Unidentified: Good question.
(inaudible discussion)
Bird: I would like to see, I’m like Ron, you’ve got goals and stuff. We’ve got goals and timetables. It seems like every time you set a timetable we (inaudible).
Bowers: Then we’ll go onto goals, No. 2. These are goals that the committee again put together for improved organizational techniques. Develop adopt the right training on SOGs. Obtain
legal counsel, review SOGs, priority being adopted. Review SOGs to ensure that they remain current and appropriate and change anything that needs to be changed or updated.
Bird: (inaudible) public record (inaudible). I don’t know what SOGs are.
Bowers: You bet. They’re called several things. Some of them are called SOGs which are standard operational guidelines. Some are called SOPs, standard operational procedures. There are
several names for them. On page 32 then, or 31 excuse me on 31. Objective 2D, --
Bird: (inaudible)
Bowers: A lot of these things Joe just said to highlight. I wasn’t going to go through every one unless you want to go through everyone.
Bird: I just want to bring up the point our ordinance says what the Mayor shall do and what (inaudible) shall do. (inaudible) are responsible for with the departments.
Bowers: Okay.
Bird: I’ll say that our guideline is by City Ordinance.
Bowers: Okay.
Anderson: I don’t think this objective is in conflict –
Bird: Oh, no. I (inaudible) I just want to make sure they understand we can’t just go out and adopt (inaudible).
Bowers: Also then objective 2 D, page 31. Obtain legal counsel review of the current pay reimbursement system for the part time, or on-call personnel and modify the procedure if needed
based on the legal counsel review of. Basically what this is, are we going by the fair labor standard act for these people? Are we not? Are we paying them too much to be part timers?
There are just a lot of different questions that we should or will be asking our counsel to look into and help us out.
(inaudible discussion)
Bowers: Yes. Well, yeah. She’s the one that had brought it up that we need to get with Bill on that too. Pauline and her will be working together.
Anderson: I think the whole issue about the pay of the part time people (inaudible).
Bowers: Oh, yeah.
(inaudible discussion)
Bowers: I can explain just a little bit or Joe can. When we first started the evaluation they were getting $4.50 to $5.00. We were really under minimum wage. After that we did change
to $8.00, $9.00, $12.00 and $15.00 so we did get above minimum wage on that. That’s the first time that Joe had brought it to us. So, we are above minimum wage now but there’s still
concerns on part time pay or volunteer pay, or on-call pay and not being employees of the city. That comes into another objective –
Bird: They are employees. If you’re paying, they’re not contract. You’re insuring them when they’re out there (inaudible) medical and workman’s comp and all that stuff so they are an
employee anyway you look at it. At less each one of them signs a sub-contract and brings in an insurance certificate that says they’re covered for liability and they’re covered for that.
Parott: The issue that was raised in the evaluation was in fact their status has been (inaudible). Current (inaudible) is fairly clear that if you want someone to be a volunteer (inaudible)
compensation. In fact it should be tied to reimbursement of expenses (inaudible). A number of the rulings have come out that very negative against any fashion of reimbursement that’s
tied to an hourly rate. In fact most who have faced that (inaudible). Our look at it said this potentially has that flavor and in fact it does ought to get (inaudible).
Bird: I know in the private sector, you have an employee. If you tell him when he comes, which you do with volunteers. How he does it, when he does it and all that then he is an employee.
Now, if he’s a sub-contractor, you tell him you know this job’s got to be done and he brings in his certificate the he’s all covered everything and he can work on his hours. That’s why,
you know (inaudible)
Bowers: I don’t want to put any words in anybody’s mouth but I’ve been told they are not employees of the city. I’ve been told that they are employees of the city. That'’ what Pauline
and myself want to get with Bill and so we can do something about it. One way or the other. Then on down to the bottom of that 2F, is basically the same thing, Keith, is we would like
to include our part time on-call
people for our city’s employee assistant program. They go out on code blues, they go out on dead infants. They go out on bad car wrecks. We need to be able to cover these people just
as well as we do our full time people. There’s a little stress involved. Not being employees, they are not covered under this. That’s one thing that we want to try to figure out one
way or the other.
Bird: All right. I definitely agree with you on that Kenneth. The only thing on something like that is the stress level, how much of it is coming from us and how much of it (inaudible).
Bowers: Exactly.
Bird: I do agree with you.
Bowers: If there’s a bad call.
Bird: I personally agree with you.
Bowers: Again I don’t want to put words in anybody’s mouth but the person said that if we do have any problems with a part timer from a call that we would be able to get them into an
assisted program, somewhere somehow. That we would take care of it. I would like to have that down. Page 32 then. Basically what we worked on 2G, develop and perform pre-entry qualifications
and background checks. We are doing that now. We are doing that at this time. 2I, down at the bottom. Develop and implement a safety committee. This is one thing that we don’t have at
this time but we would like to get a committee to go and establish a regular meeting schedule for the safety committee. This committee would review all safety concerns, safety related
issues and bring toward to the fire commission.
(inaudible discussion)
Bowers: No that’s fine.
Bird: Do you as firemen have weekly safety meetings or anything like that?
Bowers: No.
Bird: Mike, do they do that in Boise? Do you guys (inaudible)
Ingram: We have a safety meeting at least once a month.
Bird: But the rest of the firemen are not set down and say hey you know guys we had something (inaudible)
Ingram: I do that on a company level but that’s not required. Our captains will do that too.
(inaudible discussion)
Anderson: Like Mike was saying, I mean we have and he has (inaudible). Those committees have regular meetings. There’s a lot more informal safety briefings but we call them tail board
sessions after we have a fire or something. (inaudible) talks about the call and any safety violations that he saw. It probably happens more often than once a week at (inaudible) It’s
not a set time for any set number of minutes.
(inaudible discussion)
Ingram: Any time (inaudible) we go over there and our captains or officer will sit down and discuss what happen (inaudible). Councilman you had a question on PT testing –
Bird: Yeah I seen that.
Ingram: -- it’s covered here in 2A.
Bird: (inaudible)
Bowers: Page 33, 2J, through communications and teamwork within our department develop additional opportunities for the full time and the part timers to interact and to have joint trainings.
We will have that more often now that we have two companies now (inaudible) Part timers to train. I think that will work out a little bit better. We need to work on our two way communication.
Accountability between the administrative, the fire fighters and the captains. We need to work that out a little bit more. We’ve put up bulletin boards now, mailboxes. We’ve started
writing memos almost daily now. We’re cutting a lot of trees but we’re happy to do that so we can get everybody’s information out now. Working with Pauline on this next one with 2K.
To ensure a safe, non-hostile work environment, harassment, discrimination, privacy, diversity in our work place as we grow. As we get more people in our community. As we get more people
in the fire department this is going to be a top priority in the future.
Bird: Don’t you believe that fire fighters who work 24 hours together need to have probably training different than what the 8 hour employees that go home for the other 16 hours? I would
think that we would need somebody training, not that Pauline can’t help, but I think we need somebody that’s professional to deal with the fire fighters or EMTs or somebody like that
that’s used to 24 hour on. Where you’ve got 4, 6 , 8, 10, 24 hours together. It’s different than working 8 hours then going home.
Bowers: Exactly. You’re with them that whole time day and night. What I meant was I’m working with Pauline on this. She is working with IDC or somebody like
that. Bringing people in, she wouldn’t be doing it herself. She would bring in some people. You know, we’ve got to look into the future that we’re going to have women one of these days.
The privacy of these guys. I mean there’s not much privacy on a 24 hour shift.
***End Of Side One***
(inaudible discussion)
Anderson: I don’t personally feel that specialized training (inaudible). The same basic rules, just common courtesy things, about people being nice and polite. There’s nothing special
whether you’re working 24 hours a day or 8 hours a day. You still treat others with respect. (inaudible)
Bowers: 2L then, at the bottom of the next page. Ensure all personnel adhere to the department’s mission, vision and values. Basically what this is, is to get our vision statements,
or mission statements or value statements in front of all the fire fighters, of all the people that they can see what they are so they can start doing them day to day and not just hearsay
based on what our vision statement is. So, this is just to get our people more familiarized with these.
Anderson: (inaudible)
Bowers: We will be making little pictures, little boards with our mission statement on them. Start posting them around like what you have done there at your office and stuff. So, everybody
can see. Start talking to our captains in staff meetings and stuff. Telling them about our mission statements and values. Have them work with their fire fighters, their other two fire
fighters. Trying to get the word out what our mission statement.
(inaudible)
Anderson: I feel strongly about mission statement because I spent a lot of time coming up with some key words. That really is the backbone of an organization. I ought to be able to
turn to this (inaudible). Huge recycling mission statement. That’s something that I think probably – this guy goes into the recruiter --.
Bowers: What we’d like to do is make up little cards too. I mean, sure you might forget but carry the card with you at all times. You carry yours around. (inaudible)
Unidentified: Tattoo it on their forehead.
Bird: Problem is you can’t read that.
Unidentified: Everybody else can though.
Bowers: 2M then. Oh yes.
Unidentified: Something along that line too. If we get something on the truck, (inaudible). It might help the guys trying to be more professional (inaudible).
Bowers: That’s the big panels on the side of our trucks now. We were thinking that if we could get our statement up there on our panels it would be neat. We would really like to do that.
(inaudible discussion)
Unidentified: The sides of your trucks aren’t business cards. (inaudible)
(inaudible discussion)
Bowers: 2M then on page 34. Basically we discussed about decrease the work flow on our part time on-call people. What that is, is we are requiring so much work out of these part timers.
Every Tuesday night to show up on our house (inaudible). To basically do the same training week after week after week basically. We discussed trying to give our part timers more advanced
training than just the basics and give them some interest to come down and work on Tuesday nights instead of just coming down and pulling a hose every week. Do some specialized training.
We need to work on our recruitment and training the new part timers. Lessen he burden on the staff that takes care of them. Explore incentive programs for them. Any kind of a program
for retirement or awards or recognitions, or anything like this. We would like to be able. We picked that up as an objective to work with.
(inaudible discussion)
Bowers: Yes. Anybody here? Jon.
Thompson: The explorer program is certainly active. We meet on Thursday nights every other week, twice a month. At the present time we have 6 explorers with I think maybe 3 showing up
per week. It’s (inaudible) and he is in the process of bringing surveys back from the high schools so we can get (inaudible).
Bowers: Then the committee picked out for goal number three basically develop effective community outreach and involvement. They picked out 8 objectives for goal three. Produce and distribute
an annual report of the department’s activities. Prepare a short report for the public, for the rural commissioner’s, the city council people, for anybody to look at there. Tell them
how many calls we went on, what kind of calls, our organization. Our next objective: develop customer satisfactionary survey. Basically what that would be is to develop a survey to randomly
sample some of our customers. There could be a set of questions we
could send out or just even a, I hope everything’s okay, how you doing, sorry it happened. Some kind of questions, you know were our people courteous? Was our response time in the perimeter
of minutes? Different questions that we can ask so we get some survey back from the public. Right now you only hear once or twice, the good things we do. You know you always hear the
bad things. As you know, being the City Council and Rural Commission, our good things out weigh the bad a bunch. It just doesn’t show up. But also we talked about establishing, in 3C,
update, a citizen’s advisory committee. I believe the police are doing that now. They’re working on a citizen’s advisory committee. And develop a committee that has an input to communicate
with the Council. Where we possibly need to be too in the future. We’d have to define the roles and the purpose of the committee and have the committee establish a schedule for the meetings.
3D would be to develop public informational programs. Do more stuff for the public if we can. Like with blood draws. We did our first blood draw and it turned out very successful. The
MDA program that we’ve done for several years. Worked with North Ada County Fire and Rescue on very successful there. Open houses. We always try to put on an open house once a year.
Give out hot dogs. Give out fire prevention stuff. We always get a good turn out on that. Also increase the activities in our community. If we can do more sporting events. Right now
we go to the football games, run the whistle, run our sirens, excuse me, when they score. Sometimes we use the siren a lot. Sometimes we don’t use it at all. But, hey that’s games. That’s
sporting games. Work out with grand openings. Every once in a while we have a grand opening, a company that wants us to come and hand out fire prevention stuff when they’re having a
grand opening. We always love parades, of course. We always work at he Easter egg hunt and work out our Sparky the Dog and Luggy the Plug. Kids just enjoy that. I think our adults like
it just as much. Next page, 3F there in the middle, develop programs that educate youth on the duties and career opportunities in the fire service. Right now we are working with, I can’t
remember the school right over here, --
Unidentified: Locust Grove.
(inaudible discussion)
Unidentified: Meridian Academy.
Bowers: Meridian Academy, yeah. Whatever they call themselves. They changed their name again. But, we’re working with them very closely. The kids want to job shadow us for 4 or 5 hours
a day. That has been turning out very successful. They come over and follow one of our fire fighters for 4 or 5 hours, go through the truck and the equipment and the turn out gear. So,
that’s been working out very good for us. Continue the Explorer program. With the explorer programs, if it is a good program, which ours is, a lot of those kids will go on to become
fire fighters. Either into the part timers or into the full time. They love it,. They decide that’s what they want. We’ve had several of our explorers go on and either get onto a full
time department or a part time department right now. So, that’s kind of
a neat thing in our cap that we’ve been able to do that. We haven’t done a lot of this, but we have done a few of them, is develop a ride along program. For people to come and ride along
with our fire department in the fire truck. Go on calls. That stuff makes me kind of nervous because we’ve got a little liability there for these people if something happens. But, it’s
still good PR to be able to have these people go out on call with us and see what happens.
Anderson: What do you with you job shadows (inaudible) they go out on calls with you?
Bowers: No. They don’t at this time. I will take them in my car to the call if we have one. But, I haven’t got a real good definite answer from the school district if they would be covered
in a fire truck in a wreck. Now, they are covered for a lot of other things. But I haven’t got a real definite answer from the school yet. I know we would be liable too somewhere. We’d
be involved in it somewhere even thought they sign a form. At this time we haven’t let the job shadows. We do the explorers because they do have insurance. (inaudible). Yes, Reggie?
Edwards: My department’s (inaudible). We found that any passengers (inaudible) not only student but business leaders, (inaudible) and all types of (inaudible) ride along with us. Virtually
every weekend we have some, whether it’s a business owner or explorer, scout or some form of a ride along in place (inaudible).
Bowers: That’s good.
Edwards: It’s worked out excellent.
Bowers: A couple moths ago we got hammered and we had about 7 of them on a run one day. You know there’s no way you can do that. Just no way.
Edwards: Yeah. We require them to schedule ahead of time.
Bowers: Yes.
Edwards: So (inaudible). In fact there’s about one per unit at a given time to ride along. That does give the business leaders in the community especially a chance to see what we do.
(inaudible)
Bowers: Okay. Thank you. I appreciate it. 3G, this is another one of our objectives we picked. Deliver and monitor fire prevention education in the schools. We have set back and looked
at our programs that we’re doing in schools. We were getting a lot of good information out to the schools. We’ve decided to change that a little bit as you’ve probably heard us talking
about our five minute speech or five minute school program about car seats, bicycle safety, gun safety and Halloween, Christmas, all holiday safety. So, it’s working out very good. We
get in, talk for five minutes then we’re gone to the next school. It’s
been working out pretty good. So, we’re looking at updating that information yearly.
Bird: Kenneth, do you take the truck out and (inaudible) anything off the truck to the schools?
Bowers: It depends on the weather and if the teacher wants the kids to go out in the parking lot. Then we will go out and spray some water to show them, pull a hose.
Bird: Is that pretty good? Is that requested quite a bit out of the ?
Bowers: Not very often. They pretty much like to keep the kids in the classroom.
Unidentified: (inaudible) ISP on career day. (inaudible)
Bird: I remember when I was in school, once a year the whole school would come out. The fire department would come out with a couple of things (inaudible). Kind of like that open house
that you guys have now.
(inaudible discussion)
Bowers: There’s a lot of buckets there, a lot of buckets. Blake was the one that did our child program for many years. He found that when you got several classrooms of kids together
that there was just no participation with them and they would kick and fight and yell and screaming and stuff like that. So, it didn’t last very long. Their vision of a fire person standing
up there.
Bird: Our age group had discipline when I was in school.
Bowers: Yeah. That could be.
(inaudible discussion)
Unidentified: Their five minute presentation concept is very good because, one it matches the attention spans of these little tikes. It gets fire fighters in front of (inaudible). We
talk about a variety of things.
McCandless: I would like to compliment your station or personnel. I, last summer brought my 8-year-old grandson in here. HE was visiting and he got a one treatment.
Bowers: Good.
McCandless: All the ladders were being climbed, he still talks about it. He was just really thrilled with it.
Bowers: Thank you. (inaudible). Page 38 then, 3H, an objective was to improve the community understanding of the EMS roles and responses by the fire department. What we need to do there
is we as a group, City, Rural Fire Fighters, administrative, we need to sit down and come up with a good answer to these people that come up and say why do I see an ambulance roll and
a fire truck right behind it? Why is that? Why don’t we just have one rig? So, we want to work on that so we’re all not telling them something different and possibly get the information
to them why a fire truck goes because of the response time. Why an EMS roles on heart attacks and stuff. That’s one of our objectives that we will be working on for the public. Goal
number 4 that we picked out, was effectively manage financial equipment and facility resources. They picked out 7 objectives on this. Number 4A would be acquire a ladder truck. Develop
a financial plan for this vehicle. As you can see that’s quite a ways out, 2005. Be able to start working on the City Council knowingly one of these days in the future that we will have
to purchase, we will be purchasing a ladder truck. We cannot rely on Boise to use their ladder truck as often as we do because they are getting much busier and have more calls. Nampa
is rolling all the time with theirs so it’s harder for them to respond to our area. You put on another 5 years, you can just imagine what the call volume will be in Boise and Nampa.
Bird: Kenneth, what size building requires a ladder truck? Is there a size? I mean what’s the story?
Bowers: Well, there’s several ways to discuss that Keith. By the Idaho Survey and Rating Bureau, Doug Young. Some people go by that and some don’t. Any building over three stories. Three
stories or more needs to have a ladder.
McCandless: So, St. Luke’s –
Bowers: We have 13 buildings in our area that, 13 yeah, 13 in our area that is 3 stories or higher. Now that’s not 3 floors like the creamery has, I mean that’s 2 floors but the center
of it goes up so that’s kind of different on that.
McCandless: The creamery’s caught fire you ought to let it burn.
Bowers: You wouldn’t want to go in there with the concrete falling. You’re right. So, there are different ways, there’s different ways, different stories to figure out if you need a
ladder truck or not. Also on our trucks right now, Keith we only have 35 foot ladders. That'’ the tallest ladders we have. So, the 3 stories or more you do have to start using your stairs.
You don'’ want to use the elevators if you have a fire alarm so you have to use the stairs. That’s one way to look at it there. Joe (inaudible).
Silva: The other thing on that Keith is a lot of buildings even though that they may not be, they may only be 2 floors, (inaudible) hook ladders. Modern office buildings would require
that you have a ladder (inaudible).
Bird: Yeah. I have no doubt that we need a ladder truck. I just was – what’s one cost?
Bowers: They value. I mean the value’s just like an engine 400,000 to 700,00. I mean it’s just –
Bird: Well, what –
Bowers: -- whatever we’d want.
Anderson: Like Kenny said, I mean you can buy the Yugo or you can buy the Cadillac. The price range right now would range from probably in the neighborhood (inaudible) all the way
up to (inaudible). I think the issue about ladder trucks is, at this point Meridian‘s a young growing City. It’s expanding very rapidly. At some point in the future we’ll need a ladder
truck but our priorities right now are to get additional fire stations and some engine trucks. There are a million things that you can do to hold off the need for that ladder truck.
City Council can limit the building height of new buildings. You can put in fire protection system. (inaudible). There’s some other things that we can do. I think the time frame they’re
looking at, maybe 2005, probably realistic. You don’t, the minute you get one building that goes over 3 stories go out and buy a half a million dollar truck to service one building.
That (inaudible). The more buildings you get in your district, the more the need is. There’s also a lot of other uses, like Joe talked about where there’s just a warehouse fire and it’s
(inaudible). Once the roof goes in that’s (inaudible). I think they’re realistic on their time frame and stuff. (inaudible)
(inaudible discussion)
Unidentified: Joe, does the city stay pretty progressive on the fire prevention aspects of new buildings? I mean is it updated quite frequently in the requirements? How often –
Silva: A lot of the buildings are sprinkled. We don’t have the ability to (inaudible) it real closely.
(inaudible discussion)
Unidentified: But at the time that a new building is being built, how often do the standard change? How often does the City take a look at updating the requirements? Things like that?
Silva: Typically every three years the fire code comes out. (inaudible) to modify that.
Bird: Do you know how many (inaudible) that have been built in the last (inaudible).
(inaudible discussion)
Bird: I know quite a few buildings (inaudible).
Silva: Most typically yeah.
Bird: They pay for themselves (inaudible).
Bowers: There’s a lot of things that go into that. The size of the building. The water flow of the City of Meridian can produce at that location. How many people are going to be in that
building. What you’re going to have in that building. What product are you going to sell or give away or whatever you do. There are a lot of factors that go into a plan to see if it’s
going need sprinklers or not. If it’s not over a size or if we’ve got good water flow, got hydrants all over the place. There’s a certain size of building that doesn’t need to be sprinkled.
Unidentified: Right. On a certain square footage. I was just curious if there’s radical changes or if the City goes (inaudible) because the limits of the department goes a little farther
than what a (inaudible) like maybe Boise.
Unidentified: Some City’s do opt to be more strict with fire structure requirements as a way of mitigating (inaudible)
Unidentified: So, that is an option of the City to maybe take it beyond the normal standards depending on their circumstances. The City could say (inaudible)
Bowers: Also, Joe mentioned, Joe Parott mentioned that several communities – I don’t know if it was Arizona it where it was at. All over the country basically, every home, every residence
(inaudible). 4B then basically is continually evaluate the effects of the 3 percent tax limitation. I know we can’t do anything about that. The committee picked that as keeping it in
front of the City Council. Trying to –
(inaudible discussion)
Bowers: -- to discuss that with AIC and other things. I know it’s been, was the last couple months really hit hard for the City with our mill levy coming up. That was one thing that
the committee picked on to help you guys too.
(inaudible discussion)
Bowers: Yeah.
Anderson: (inaudible) We gave a presentation on it a week ago where we outlined what kind of problems that 3 percent cap is creating for the City. As you look at the high growth rate
that Meridian has had, 264 percent over the last en years. When the legislature designed that 3 percent cap, it took into consideration that the standard growth rate of being somewhere
of up to about 5 percent. Anywhere from 3 to about 5 percent. But, we’re actually experiencing a 264 percent. We’re experiencing about a 26 percent growth rate. Plus being capped at
only being able to increase our budget by 3 percent over the previous year. That nearly compensates for the cost of living and salary increases. I think it’s important that our employees
and our department people understand those limitations because if the City of Meridian is not successful in increasing our mill levy or getting some legislation changed within a couple
of years here you guys are going to seriously start feeling the impact of that. There won’t be the ability to build fire stations or hire additional personnel because all of our funds
will just be going to pay our existing people and the cost of living increases. This election that’s coming up next Tuesday night on the 22nd will allow the city a 1 point increase to
increase our mill levy (inaudible). That will generate a little over a million dollars. That would help us a lot and it would continue funding. But we really feel like this election
is going to be determined by word of mouth. By a grass roots effort of people knocking on doors, telling their friends and their relatives because it’s not getting a lot of press. It’s
not a big story in the news. All it will take is a few hundred people to show up and say and it’s really going to impact you guys within a couple of years. So, I would encourage you
to get out and try to talk to a couple of your friends and neighbors and see what we can do to get this thing passed. (inaudible) help you guys and the city in the long run.
Unidentified: Kind of along that line now. Starting to sound foolish but. Like I said, we’ve got these big old trucks out there running around town. Is it not kosher or politically acceptable
to do some sort of signage or something that would get the word out. Something very basic and simple. In the form of a banner or something on the trucks that just makes people aware
that we need your help. You know something like, we need your help on Tuesday, please vote or something. Is that not allowable in this service ?
Anderson: I think you have to be careful. I think you could have a banner that reminds people of the election and you could say please support. But you can’t I think you’d want to
avoid trying to say you know vote yes on –
Unidentified: No. Something like support your community vote this Tuesday or something like that. Not biased for or against but it makes people aware of it. I see these things all over
town.
Anderson: I think we also have some City policies that talk about not having campaign signs and other type of things (inaudible). I’m not sure we could do it at this point.
(inaudible discussion)
Anderson: We have put stuff in all the City water bills when they went out. We do have literature that’s available that you can get at City Hall. The clerk can make additional copies.
So, if you guys want anything to hand out to your neighbors or anybody that you know. (inaudible)
Nichols: If I can butt in though. The point about what this information is, is a fact sheet. That’s like a spec sheet on a car or a truck. There still needs to be the salesperson. That’s
where the City’s employees and the fire service has an opportunity in talking to people and handing them that sheet is explain why it’s important to vote yes. What a yes vote would do
besides that part of it. Specifically for the fire services and Council is indicating how much of that approximately (inaudible) would be available to the fire department in the next
budget to be used for certain things. That’s, like I say, it’s a dry fact sheet. It’s accurate but it needs a salesperson.
Anderson: (inaudible) because after we gave the presentation last Tuesday night. There was actually some other city employees there. They said we were going to vote no on that until
we saw the presentation. Now we see, we understand all of the numbers behind it. We understand what kind of a predicament this is going to put you guys in. We’re in favor of it now.
That’s the trouble. We’re not going to be able to go out and give a PowerPoint presentation to everybody so that they understand the predicament that we’re in. So, there’s going to
have to be a salesmanship (inaudible).
(inaudible discussion)
Bowers: Thanks Ron. I appreciate it. Page 40 then, 4E. Basically, the committee thought that we could reduce the department’s exposure to legal liabilities. Provide risk training to
the department personnel and develop a drapers training program. That’s where we run into the problems with accidents, going and coming back from calls. 4G is, the committee thought
this was an important objective too was try to ensure that the other departments around the other cities does not annex any more property into our area. So we’re not losing acres and
acres every time another city decides to do an annexation. At that time that would work into evaluating where the future station sites would be. We’ve already had to change our site
plan. We wanted to be at Eagle Road and McMillan. That was our long-range plan years ago. We can’t do it anymore because that’s basically the City of Boise’s property and they’ve got
one 1 mile away. So, it wouldn’t be very acceptable to put another on a mile away. That’s what we would need to learn and to keep the annexation down.
Anderson: That’s something we would engineer too. Because this is a real political football right now. County Commissioners at this point, are looking at a paper plate and approving
these rural subdivisions that are built to urban densities that have a packaged waste treatment plant. The reason they’re looking at it is because we don’t have right now the ability
to get our water and sewer out to them because they’ve bought pieces of property that are too far out from the city. They are not contiguous now. There’s too much property between them.
We don’t have any money that will just allow us to build water and sewer lines outside the city limits. It’s up to the developers to fund that. But the County is seriously looking at
that. If they do that, what’s probably going to happen is ultimately the city is going to have to say we can’t go where we have our impact area. We may have to actually have to draw
back in our impact area from where they’re at because we can’t service those areas. If we do that, then the other cities are immediately going to (inaudible). Everybody would expand
their areas. They would put the services which ultimately would meant we lose the fire protection because once they go into those cities and they annex it. Then they would automatically
come out of the rural fire district. There’s some serious stuff going on right now in this county on a political level that really impacts you guys and it’s important that stay up, make
calls to some of those county commissioners and things like that. We’ve been working real hard with this, this last election. Sharon Aulman, she’s definitely in favor of allowing those
types of systems. Grant Kingsford is on the fence. Roger Clemmons is the only support we have right now. We’ve got to get another commissioner. Otherwise they’re going to start approving
these types of systems (inaudible). The rural fire district (inaudible) the side of Meridian. (inaudible).
Bowers: Good comment. These developers want to put in 800 – 900,000 home subdivisions way out 5 or 6 miles form our district. From the city limits basically too. What creates a problem
there is the rural district will have to take care of those people for the same amount of tax money they get now. Mike can explain it a little bit more than I can. Just because they
bring in 1,000 homes, that doesn’t meant they’re going to get a bunch more tax money to come in. Like Ron said, our futures are in some people’s hands right now. We’re going to have
to be careful. Goal No. 5, basically the committee is to provide timely and accurate information. 5A and 5B is basically just getting new programs in our computer system to bring up
how many calls we’ve been on, what kind of calls. Develop a list of our fire losses but also our fire safes too. I mean if we lose $50,000 in a $100,000, we lost 50, we saved 50. We
don’t have that information available at this time. That would be good for somebody to, for us to use and you guys to use also. Also we need to establish, maintain and develop a follow
up procedure to ensure our fire code violations are enforced in the city and in the rural. Right now when there is a code violation we have to go through quite a (inaudible) to get our
people out to look at them to see what the problem is> We have to go through a lot of channels. We want to streamline that quite a bit. Basically on page 42 is performance objectives
and targets. The committee worked on this.
Number 1 is to provide arrival of resources within the city on 90 percent of our calls within 5 minutes or less. Provide adequate resources within the rural area 90 percent of the time
7 minutes or less. Right now, we’re at 7 minutes in the city and 9 in the rural. So, we would like to drop 2 minutes off of each one of those. We also would like to provide adequate
resources to fight an interior tack structure fire. Basically what we would like to do is have adequate resources on the scene in the city 90 percent of the time under 7 minutes and
90 percent of the time in rural under 9 minutes. We, in the fire service have been basically. Two guys would get on the scene. They’d rush into the fire and try to put it out. You didn’t
have anybody on the outside to help put. Basically now with 2 in 2 out. Basically an structure fire or interior tack with 2 people, you need to have 2 people outside ready, suited up
and ready to go. We would need the resources to be responding as the first call comes in instead of the fire truck getting on scene, seeing that they’re going to need more help and then
calling for it. You lose a lot of time there. Also, in the medical end of it we would not like to see our response, or not the response times, but anyhow our responses to have over 24
calls per thousand population. What that means basically is per thousand calls we would not like to have more than 24 medical calls. So, if we got, how many population now? 37?
(inaudible)
Unidentified: How do you propose to control that? I mean that’s –
Bowers: Basically what we would try to do at that point would be you now fire prevention type of things but medical prevention.
Unidentified: So, through education and stuff you want to work on –
Bowers: The medical.
Unidentified: -- reducing the number of calls.
Bowers: Reducing the medical calls. Yes.
(inaudible discussion)
Bowers: Basically we don’t have any numbers for structure fires per thousand people or property loss for a thousand people. With our new programs we will be able to pull that information
up to give it to you guys.
Unidentified: That was identified in one of the objectives –
Bowers: Yes.
Unidentified: Let me talk for a minute about what these are. These are essentially an opportunity to define good service. How good the organization’s going to perform. They’re also extremely
useful for things like fire station location (inaudible). For a variety of things. If you define that you want to have the EMS medical services on the scene within 5 minutes 90 percent
of the time within the city. It’s a pretty simple equation to figure out where fire stations would be (inaudible) to be able to achieve that. It’s a very useful tool to monitor performance
at the time. IF the numbers start increasing --
***End Of Side Two***
Unidentified: -- as well as property losses. Find a level of property loss that’s acceptable. When you’re able to achieve that then all is well. There are other strategies like where
sprinkler buildings and certain types are in fact (inaudible) can dramatically effect the performance (inaudible). This section is going to be very important for you to consider as you
go about your adoption of this document. In order to give guidance to the implementation for some of the other objectives.
Bowers: Basically then next few pages are for, it repeats all the bullets again and give you the time limit in the red that they should be accomplished.
Anderson: (inaudible) seem like important numbers to have in your overall plan. If you would like to have the numbers on the (inaudible).
(inaudible discussion)
Unidentified: These numbers are a little bit harder to capture. (inaudible) because (inaudible).
(inaudible discussion)
Nichols: Yeah they do. They don’t show other improvement. IF there’s a value for improvement they don’t show whether that’s a building, it might be some other sort of improvement that
they’re able to tax like a (inaudible).
Unidentified: (inaudible) anything over 5 acres (inaudible). They don’t have to go to the county. They can just build it. They don’t need a permit or anything.
Unidentified: You can have a series of buildings on the property reflect as one property owner –
Unidentified: And nobody knows about it.
Nichols: and one number.
(inaudible discussion)
Bird: When do we expect to have this –
Ingram: Let me interrupt real quick just to clarify. Residential properties are those that people live in. You wouldn’t be counting outbuildings, barns and sheds. (inaudible). The number
of residential units should be (inaudible). Commercial buildings, you will take record of that (inaudible).
(inaudible discussion)
Bird: When do you expect that to be up and running? Are we working with any of the other city’s fire department (inaudible)?
Unidentified: We have pretty much got (inaudible). (inaudible) We’re in the process of (inaudible) Ada County records management (inaudible). So, we’re going to have pretty good data.
We’re able, within the last few months to actually Sam and Steve have been doing a lot of work on that. (inaudible) If we have an instance where (inaudible) request for aide (inaudible).
Bowers: Basically the last page is just regrouping goals 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and puts a time limit on it for us. We put a hefty time limit on some. Some of them we put pretty short. We put
a lot of As. That means that was critical to get it done. The committee decided that we needed a lot of As. I wish they would have gave me a little bit more Bs. They picked out a lot
of things that were critical and need to be worked on and changed. I would like to turn it back over to Joe at this time. He can wrap up anything.
Parott: This point, the plan is in your hands. As I mentioned earlier, the desire for the benefit of the department is your blessing on this in the form of adoption (inaudible) It’s
their marching orders. Comes also on your part to support it (inaudible) and identify where it needs to adjusted.
Ingram: Can I ask you a question?
Parott: Sure.
Ingram: In your experience, your expertise, the size of our department. You have an idea of our funding limits and what’s going on here. Do you think this is an overzealous plan for
our abilities and our, for everything we have access to?
Parott: No I don’t.
Ingram – to pull this off?
Parott: It’s well within your capabilities.
Bird: Any questions?
Ingram: (inaudible) Thank you City Council for putting money aside for this. We’ve learned a great deal from this. Joe has helped us out a lot. There’s been a lot of experience he’s
been able to put into this. I appreciate the City Council for putting up the money for us to do this. We knew we would be finding things that we needed to work on.
(inaudible discussion)
Bird: These gentlemen did a fantastic job. Thank of them, Kenny, Joe, all of your staff (inaudible). I’m sure (inaudible).
(inaudible discussion)
Bird: You guys have really set a standard for the future City Councils and the rural commissioners to give us a guideline. Even though budgets are tight, we don’t have to do everything
in one year but we’ve got a plan here that we can plan out and get it accomplished in the year that we need it if we stay to i. We all know that 3 years ago when Ron and I came on board
this fire department was 20 years behind times. We’ve taken giant steps in the last 3 years. (inaudible) Now we have got the tools and the plan to make this (inaudible) to make sure
that we hold the fire department, management and firemen accountable for these goals being obtained. In the same token they need to hold us as the Council and Fire Commissioners accountable
to get the funding if at all possible to make sure the goals are obtained. I’ll throw it out to anybody that wants to, have a statement, anything you want to say regarding this assessment
or anything. Steve, you or Mike got anything to say?
Bravo: No. I’m just glad to have a basic guideline finally. It’s been a long time coming.
Bird: Something you can work forward to and it’s a long-range plan.
Bravo: It’s a long range but it keeps –
Bird: It keeps us in –
Bravo: It gives us a guidance instead of well let’s try this, let’s go over here and do this.
(inaudible discussion)
Unidentified: First of all I’d like to say that (inaudible). It was actually a lot of fun. (inaudible) It was a great learning experience for all of us. I think you have a very workable
(inaudible). I think it’s, what I see, (inaudible). You know for a long time
there Council had (inaudible). The question was how are you (inaudible). I think if you follow this plan, as long as it doesn’t gather dust, as long as it’s used and is constantly re-evaluated,
I think you’re ready to go somewhere.
(inaudible discussion)
Anderson: Three and a half years ago when Keith and I came onto the council one of the primary reasons why I ran for the city council was because I had been approached about concerns
about the fire department, where they were at and where they were heading. So, coming onto the council that was one of my main objectives is to make (inaudible). Along the way I got
caught up in all the other city politics and couldn’t just find myself trying to help one department because it’s really a citywide effort. This project has been something that’s been
near and dear to my heart. I pushed hard for the new station here and additional equipment and manpower, and the station that we’re building. This is one of the things that from day
one when I got on the council I started pushing for it. First I had to convince everybody that this was worth while. (inaudible) My vision is that hopefully I can get things kicked started
here and that then this would be the plan. As Joe talked about a dynamic plan (inaudible) that every year your department comes back and revisits this and updates it. I’m going to continues
for the next seven months that I’m on the council to get the council to adopt this and buy into this plan. Then I feel like I can leave the council at the end of this year in good conscience
knowing that we do have a plan. Something to carry forward with and that the department isn’t going to just stagnate and die and stay where it was when I leave the council. This is a
very important document to me. I appreciate Joe and the work and leadership that he provided. Show me the department. How to do a plan. How to put it together. I think they now have
the tools that they can continue on with this plan. I appreciate your leadership and showing them how to do this process. I agree with Reggie, I think Meridian Fire Department in three
and a half years has gone from basically a bottom of the basement, bottom of the heap as far as fire departments in this valley. It’s evident now, when the first time we tried to hire
some folks, we had just a few applications. Now when we put out an advertisement for an application, we get more applications that we know what to do with because everybody knows Meridian’s
got their stuff together and they’re going places. I think that’s something that we can all be proud of. I commend all the guys that worked on this committee. You guys have put together
a great vision for the department and I think we’re on the right track. We’re going to get there. I appreciate all the work.
Unidentified: The State of Idaho is putting on a class right here the last couple of weeks.
(inaudible)
Unidentified: We’ve had people form all over the state here. They’re looking up Meridian. They’re looking toward Meridian as somebody to follow. They’ve asked
me for this report here. So, it’s out and everybody knows that Meridian has done this. They’re asking us for copies of our union contract. They’re asking us for training stuff now. It
makes us all feel proud that Meridian is moving up now on the ladder and people are asking us for stuff instead of us being so sheeply and asking how do you do this and how do you do
that. This week here, it’s really made me feel that we’ve made a big leap when all of these trainers and some cheese and stuff from other departments are asking for this information?
Ingram: Any other comments? Rural? Legal, anything to say?
(inaudible discussion)
Anderson: An attorney with nothing to say.
Bird: Mark that on the calendar.
Nichols: I didn’t say anything because I knew you’d say that.
Ingram: City Clerk, anything? Thanks for the water, the ice. I appreciate it. Thank you very much and you probably need to close.
Bird: With that, if we have no other business, I’d entertain a motion on the City side to adjourn.
Anderson: So moved.
McCandless: Second.
Bird: All in favor, aye.
MOTION CARRIED: THREE AYES, ONE ABSENT
MEETING ADJOURNED AT 8:35 P.M.
(TAPE ON FILE OF THESE PROCEEDINGS)
APPROVED:
KEITH BIRD, PRESIDENT
WILLIAM G. BERG, JR., CITY CLERK