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HomeMy WebLinkAbout4-12-23 Fire Board Meeting minutesCity of Lansing Board of Fire Commissioners 120 E. Shiawassee St., Lansing MI 48933 (517) 483-4200 |lansingmi.gov/fire Call to Order – Establish Quorum - 5:33 p.m. Present: Charles Willis, Steve Purchase, Kris Singh, Jarrod LaRue, Kathleen Tobe, Gina Nelson, Rodney Singleton, Absent: Barb Lawrence Additions to Agenda: None Approval of Minutes: March 8, 2023 - A motion was made and supported to approve the minutes with changes as written. Motion was carried by unanimous vote. Public Comment – Agenda Items (Time Limit: 3 Minutes): None Review Communications None Comments from Chair Steve Purchase Chair Purchase stated that he had the pleasure of having lunch with the crew at Station 4 last week. It was a nice social conversation. Over the next couple of months, we will do some administrative catch-up. I don’t foresee anything heavy coming up, so if there is anything that you have, please let me know. We have our new Admin Specialist, Jules Overfelt, here tonight for introduction. Presentation Jules Overfelt stated that she just moved here from Seattle, but lived in Lansing until she was 13 years old then moved to the West Coast. She stated that she is in the process of getting her master’s in public administration and has experience in Accounts Payable and was a Barista for a time and recently I was on stage at the Riverwalk Theater for their production of Misery. Dan Wisinski is the project manager for the Bond Project. He stated he is the spoke person at meetings with contractors with regards to the project. We have here the proposed site plan. The bond included building a new Station 9 and as of now we are not sure what is going to happen to the old Station 9. Station 9 will be built at the corner of Washington and Kensington. The fence here shows it is a secure area and they will be able to pull right in and exit on to the street. This building here will be the headquarters for police and fire. It will also have the police lockup. In the back will be the training facility. This area here will be the training tower and the fall zone. It also includes an area for Confined Space and Trench rescue. The schedule is this fall we are looking to break ground. The construction will be halted for a couple of months during the winter months. Foundations will start early summer. Should be completed sometime in 2026. John McGraw stated that all cost analysis comes in within 1% of the budget. We are doing great on budget and on schedule. Chair Purchase asked when will it go out to bid? Dan stated the site bidding will start in April. Commissioner Nelson asked if the equipment is being bought or rented? Dan asked what equipment? Commissioner Nelson stated the construction equipment. Dan responded it will be bought. Dan stated that Station 2 and Station 8 are set to get renovations. Station 8 is scheduled to be done first and that is something we must work with the Chief and his staff on, because the staff will be displaced, and we need to make sure the city is adequately covered. Commissioner Purchase stated that he heard one might be a complete tear down and rebuilt. Dan stated that we are still in the process of estimating that right now. Commissioner Willis we heard that it was Station 2 that would be a rebuild. Dan said that if that was the cause he would not be able to discuss it until the decision had been made and signed off on. Commissioner Willis stated that he hopes it does happen. Dan said Maintenance and Alarm will also be moved. The whole project should be completed by 2026. John stated to give ourselves a disclaimer, hopefully we all understand that if someone else makes a decision that changes our path then the timeline changes. Chair Purchase asked where things stand with the Architectural design? We are just in the early stages of design. Commissioner Tobe stated that at one point it was stated that the courts would be done first, is that still the case? Dan said no, it’s all going to be one building. Commissioner Nelson asked once the Training Facility is done, what will happen to the property at the other location. A/C Tobin stated we are not sure yet. Chair Purchase stated that with the Prevailing wages has all of that been considered in this. Dan said yes it has. Commissioner Singh stated that this site was a heavy industrial area and asked has it had been tested. Dan said he is a GEO Tech Professional. I have been in town for a while, and we are in good shape with that area. Chair Purchase asked if there were opportunities to integrate mass timber into any part of this project. Dan stated that there is savings to using mass timber if it is a multi-level building but this one is one 2 stories. Chair Purchase asked if there will be public access to Fire Administration? Dan said yes from the street. Dan stated that the sidewalks will have ice melt mixed in so they will not be slippery during the winter months and salt will not be tracked in from the outside. There will also be charging stations built for electric vehicles. Admin Specialist Jules Overfelt asked if there will be bike lockers for those who want to ride their bikes. Dan said that not at this time. Commissioner Willis stated that he is glad to hear that the budget is on track. Chair Purchase thanked Dan and John for attending and look forward to hearing more in the fall about groundbreaking and updates. Assistant Chief Tobin stated that the committee met on Monday to go overdraft of the Strategic Plan. The 6 goals were laid out and were beat up. There were some duplicates, some overlap, that meeting lasted about 4 hours, great work came out of it. Right now, we are compiling notes from that, and draft b will be worked on and hopefully meeting again soon. With the timelines the final plan will probably not be ready to be submitted to the board, the Mayor and City council until August or September. Fire Administration Report – Mike Tobin, Assistant Chief Assistant Chief Tobin stated that the policy review is ongoing with Lexipol. We have about 192 policies, I am overseeing the reviewing with my team of 9 people. The team is doing amazing work, we meet weekly. We have rolled out about 28 policies, none of them are groundbreaking. The ones that have been rolled out are very high-level stuff. We have not gotten into the conduct policies yet. There is some learning curve and understanding by the Department, we have always had AOGs and SOGs and now we have Policies and Procedures and learning what the difference is. There is a little bit of an overlap in them. We are really moving forward. Every aspect of the Department has representation on the team. Chair Purchase stated at the last meeting the Chief said he wanted to give access to the board to Lexipol, do we know if that is possible, in his email he suggested something different. A/C Tobin stated that they did reach out to Lexipol and there is no way in the system the board access to certain policies and procedures it’s all or nothing, also for it to work you would have to be treated like an employee of the department and acknowledge that you have read and understand all the policies. I know the Chief has talked Chair Purchase with regards to the area of polices that the board has input on to figure out a review and how we can work that. The difficulty is with some of these policies, if we bring them to the board in the packet, they become part of public record. Currently the way our polices and procedures are, they are FOIA able documents so we can’t put them into public form. Chair Purchase said you mean they are not FOIA able? A/C Tobin said some policies are and some are not. So, with that we are bouncing some different ideas off on the best way we can do it. A/C Tobin said we have taken delivery of the new ambulance and it is in the station. It will be stocked today and tomorrow and hoping the State will be out next week to license it. It will be housed at Station 9. A/C Tobin stated that this week is National Telecommunication Week for the 911 Center, today LFD bought both lunch and dinner for the day and night shifts. A/C Tobin stated that LFD spends so much money on medical equipment, we found a program that was offered to us at no cost that is a rebate program through one of our primary medical suppliers. Because our threshold is so high, we are going to be installing a PICSIS system that is a controlled dispense system in our EMS stations. The benefit of this is we will be able to do more real-time deliveries and inventory because the computer will be tracking for us. It should reduce our on-shelf expiration waste by 15-25%. In order to get supplies or anything from the locker an employee will have to scan their City ID. Because of our call volume, this will allow us or a sub-company of Boundtree to take care of all our Medicare data reporting. A law was passed a few years ago requiring all EMS transporting agencies to take care of certain levels of Medicare data reporting. An agency could choose not to participate but if they did it would be a 10% fine right off the bat. To clarify on the Lansing School program, we are not going to be supplying personnel on a regular basis. Maybe here and there for testing purposes we will, but with Captain Neil being down there during 60% percent of the time, rigs being down there while on duty for extend periods of time, that is where the difficulty was for us. We are still going to be a partner with the program, but we just couldn’t be the partner with the financial level that we were the last couple of years. We are not going to have full-time people there. We will lend equipment to help. A/C Tobin stated that today Local 421 ratified their contract and will hopefully go to council on Monday and I want to go on record as Mike Tobin, Assistant Chief and commend Local 421 and the work they did on this contract. This was a very good contract, neither side got all of what they wanted but with what we identified together as to what the future needs are for the department. The changes will make Lansing Fire a place everyone wants to work for. It will also support our current hard-working employees. The department will once again be doing a wide photo session. The company will be here May 26-31. More information will follow. In the past the board has always worn the same color polo shirt and what we need from you is to pick a color if you have it great but if not, we need you to get to the Uniform Shop to get one ordered. Commissioner Nelson spoke about the MSU shooting and the response by all First Responders. A/C Tobin said it was an amazing response from many agencies. Old Business: None New Business: A/C Tobin stated that what I submitted to you was the FY 24 CI break down and the line item break down. Budget was increased 2.4%. We don’t have direct control over the personnel cost and when this budget was built the contract was not ratified yet so there may be some ongoing adjustments to this. Chair Purchase asked if those adjustments would come from this budget or the city budget. A/C Tobin stated that some of it was built into this budget with expectations, there might be some that will have to come from elsewhere, but it won’t be large numbers. Equipment rental IT based all our IT costs, we as a department covers the cost of all computers, phones, iPad etc. Fleet costs are up. This is a workable budget, is it what we want? No, but the mayor asked us to build a flat budget and that is what we did. Chair Purchase asked in the real world with inflation how does this compare to last year. Are we looking at reductions? A/C Tobin said we are not looking at a reduction in services. With streamlining and developing some projects I think we are going to be ok. Joe McClure, Deputy Finance Director, stated that he wanted to thank the Fire Dept for their work and being the first to have their budget to Finance. A/C Tobin stated that under the CIP projects there is only 1 CIP Project for the Fire Department. We are asking for 2 new rescue boats and a new ATV. We are scheduled to get 2 more ambulances in August and September and the 2 engines should be here September and October and the new ladder truck around Thanksgiving. The new paint scheme that we were told was only going to cost $3,200 well someone moved the decimal, and the actual cost is $32,000, so we went back to the original colors. Commissioner Tobe asked what the plan was for the next 3-5 years on the need for vehicles. A/C Tobin stated that the need for the Lansing Fire Department on a good replacement plan, we should be purchasing 3 ambulances every 2 years, 1 engine every year and every 3-5 years a ladder truck. Financially we can’t do that. Come January 2024 it will be the first time in my career here that we won’t have a front-line engine or ladder truck that is over 10 years old. Commissioner Nelson asked if someone wanted to donate $100,00 to the department would it be allowed? A/C Tobin said that if they donated to help buy heart monitors or other equipment, yes, it is ok but to just hand over a check and say have fun, no we can’t be done. Chair Purchased asked how are we looking at pensions, retirement costs, contributions, and things like that? Joe McClure stated that the Police and Fire pension for last FY was $18.2 million and the proposed $20.4, so there was 14% negative rate of return on investments and that is why it is so high. Health Care costs have gone up, they were 13.2 last year, and they are projected for this year at 13.8, so we are concerned about the rate of return. Captain Komm said we found a creative way to increase a benefit and save the city money. It is saving a significant amount of money long term for the City, and it will benefit the members. Chair Purchase stated that there is a letter in front of you if you can look at it and we need to put this on record so the Council can do their work in May. Chair Purchase asked for a motion to give our seal of approval for the Fire Department’s Budget for FY 23-24. Commissioner Singleton made a motion to transmit this letter as presented to support the budget, Seconded by Commissioner LaRue. The motion was carried by unanimous vote. Chair Purchase stated as we close with topic, one of the conversations we had at our last meeting with legal, if you look at the way the Police Board does this whole thing its more in line with the Charter and more in line with the way I would like to do it. It saves everyone a headache from finance to LFD Admin. The Charter doesn’t require us to approve the final budget, what the Police board does is review the departments requests to the finance department and we can give our seal of approval at that point in the process. Then the rest of the budget process, and when the mayor decides to present things etc. will never be an impediment to that. Its also helpful just speaking as a board person, if we are looking at recommendations and think these recommendations are good, it gives wake to what the department is looking for. This is what I am going to push that we do later this year as the budget process goes. Chair Purchase presented a thank you letter addressed to Plant Fitness for the donation of the exercise equipment. Commissioner Singh made a motion to send this letter as presented to Plant Fitness, Seconded by Commissioner Nelson. The motion was carried by unanimous vote. Request for Commissioners to be Excused. A motion was made by Commissioner Nelson and moved by Commissioner Singh to excuse Barbara Lawrence from the April 12, 2023, meeting. Motion carried unanimously. Commissioner Comments Commissioner Nelson asked if there is any word on Be a Tourist in your Town this year? Chair Purchase said he has not. Commissioner Nelson asked about the City Suite for a Lugnut game. A/C Tobin by the time we received the spreadsheet we had 5 nights to choose from we did make a request for the box I believe in August. Commissioner LaRue stated that he wanted to go on record and thank Captain Walkington at Station 4 for the lunch that he and his crew cooked for us on Friday. Public Comment – On any matter- speakers must state their name and address (Time Limit: 3 minutes): Captain Komm stated that he thinks Lexipol is a good thing and it’s been a long time coming. I would like to ask this board to do is that at some point in this design process for the new building, firefighters should be involved. The other think is that during his career we have had a 20% reduction in personnel and our run volume has doubled. We are doing a lot more with a lot less. I am retiring in September so someone else will be taking over for me. I thank you all for your support. I will be sending my vice president who will probably become the president to these meetings as well. General Order None Adjournment: 7:12 p Minutes submitted Wednesday, April 12, 2023, by: Michelle Greko Michelle Greko Lansing Fire Department – Administration 120 E. Shiawassee St. | Lansing, MI 48933 O: 517-483-4564 | E: michelle.greko@lansingmi.gov