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HomeMy WebLinkAboutBoard of Fire Commissioners Minutes 01.14.26 Please contact Board Secretary if you cannot attend the meeting or need accommodations at (517) 483 - 4200 or LFDadmin@lansingmi.gov CITY OF LANSING | FIRE DEPARTMENT BOARD OF FIRE COMMISSIONERS 120 E. SHIAWASSEE ST. | LANSING MI 48933 517-483-4200 LANSINGMI.GOV/FIRE 1. Call to Order – Establish Quorum 5:30 1.1. Present Chair Lawrence Jerrod LaRue Jon Scott Charles Willis Krishna Singh Attorney’s Office Elizabeth Krochmalny Guest Assistant Chief Odom Captain Neal Union President Adam Gaukel 1.2. Absent Gina Nelson Steve Purchase 2. Additions to Agenda None 3. Approval of Minutes 3.1. December Meeting – Dec 10th Commissioner LaRue motioned to approve the meeting minutes from December 10th Commissioner Willis seconded Motion passes 3.2. December Special Meeting – Dec 16th Commissioner LaRue motioned to approve the meeting minutes from the Special Meeting on December 16th Commissioner Singh Seconded Motion passes REGULAR MONTHLY MEETING AGENDA WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 14TH 2026 | 5:30 PM | STATION FOUR |1435 MILLER RD. | LANSING MI ie Fire Commissioners 1st Ward Barbara Lawrence, Chair 2nd Ward Jerrod LaRue 3rd Ward Vacant 4th Ward Gina Nelson At Large Steve Purchase At Large Jon Scott At Large Charles Willis At Large Krishna Singh, Vice Chair Please contact Board Secretary if you cannot attend the meeting or need accommodations at (517) 483 - 4200 or LFDadmin@lansingmi.gov 4. Public Comment – Agenda Items (time limit: 3 minutes) Adam Gaukel -New union president – as of next month for Local 421. Started in 2014 – current engineer for Lansing Fire. Optimistic about the future. Great people to do some great things. I would like to be as present as possible. He is 3rd Generation Lansing Fire Department. Chair Lawrence requested contact information. 5. Review Communications None 6. Comments from Chair Happy new year, new year in many ways. Feels very positive and happy going into the new year to the board and those working at Lansing Fire. Strange to see Station 8 empty and missed. Station 2 – some from 8 went to 2. They are very happy with the change. Happy to serve Lansing Fire going into the new year. Annual report will be delivered to Mayor on January 21st. Will bring any comments back to the board. This evening, under new business we will discuss our interim Fire Chief. 7. Presentations 8. Fire Administration Report – From Fire Chief Update – Chief Odom and Chief Engelter Interim Assistant Chiefs. Doing an amazing job. Able to show them different ways to advance and go to. Showing others there are opportunities for upward mobility. Able to gain a temporary Administrative Specialist – Did not hire either of the 2 who got through the entire process. Will be reposting the position again. Met with Jake Broweer to discuss the budget, to ensure we will be able to cover our projected projects, including EMS. Chair Lawrence asked if it was grant money will cover upcoming projects. Promised is a tricky way to put it – it was money that was allocated towards certain things. If we can show the opioid training, we could use some. Commissioner Willis – was there conversation about what it was supposed to be used on? Chief Edwards Clemons explains this is the situation she was put got into and had no prior information until now. Please contact Board Secretary if you cannot attend the meeting or need accommodations at (517) 483 - 4200 or LFDadmin@lansingmi.gov Commissioner Willis – Board will ask these questions. Fire Chief has answers to questions on how we are moving forward. Moving forward with Lexipol polices. HR is looking at the polices as well to ensure we are along the lines of Federal and State regulations. Chair Lawrence – recent involvement of HR in this process seems to be redundant. Lexipol has expertise in the light of federal, state and professional guidelines. This is part of the service we are paying for. Chief Odom – Lansing has specific things. Lexipol does cover federal and state. City is specific. Chair Lawrence asked for an example Chief Odom explained, sick leave – is unique to us. Our city has policies that we cannot supersede. We may do something, the city says another. Past discipline and lawsuits are taken into consideration. Pets at work are another topic. Chair Lawrence – Committee to oversee this Commissioner Willis – The individual who ran the department prior, said HR did not want involvement in our policies. This was our understanding. Elizabeth Oleary – Have not been involved in Lexipol policies. As of late December 2025, Human Resources gained access to Lexipol policies. Commissioner Willis – This does not make sense. Chair Lawrence – Board has been asking for the schedule, policies that have gone over for the past 3 years. Could not get this information from previous Chief. Received the index. Does not have to go through all of them, but the ones pertaining to administration. Have checked off the ones we have went over. Frustrated with progress, or lack of. Curious of role in HR in this. O’Leary – We just got the information. We just got this. It came to light in late 2025 that there are polices that we have never laid eyes on. It won’t be overnight. This must be meaningful. New training and disputes administrator. Can give overview of a timeline – in later meetings. VP Chair Singh – What are the charter’s requirements? Unknown When are we going to be receiving policies to review. Chief Odom – One good thing, the more eyes on it – the more we are able to ensure we are covered in all aspects. I agree on a schedule. All Lexipol does it say “this is okay, won’t get sued for this” If a best practice comes out, or new federal regulation comes out, they review our policies to ensure that we are in compliance with it. Please contact Board Secretary if you cannot attend the meeting or need accommodations at (517) 483 - 4200 or LFDadmin@lansingmi.gov Chief Edwards-Clemons – We can do a schedule. Commissioner Willis – remembers, we got beat up over the policies. Told that it was the latest and greatest. This should have been done 3 years ago. Chair Lawrence – Oversee many policies. We are focused on some fire dept policies. Chief Edwards-Clemons – we do have our BCs going over them to ensure the right ones are getting reviewed. Chair Lawrence – we have received some prevention and some training guidelines. Chief Odom – This was direction from previous Chief. We followed the directions as they gave me them. We have the Chair Lawrence – Under the City Charter, a citizens board is the ensure we look over policies. Would overall like to get on the same page. It is the focus of the Fire Board. Commissioner Scott – Policies some are outdated – and some that Lexipol says we should be doing. What policies are they currently working under, is it legal? Chief Edwards-Clemons – from our initial meeting, met with Chris Swope to understand the process. Go to board and filed with the clerk. Where are old SOG and AOG – they were given direction to get rid of them. We are operating “under old ones” but we do not have them. Unsure of that they use to be – only has Lexipol, so that is what they are operating under. Chair Lawrence – Everything was digitized Chief Edwards - Clemons - They were paper copies, and they were all thrown out. Send out polices to read and acknowledge. The fire board approved have not gone to the clerk’s office yet. Commissioner Willis – an understanding that they all must be reviewed. We are going by Lexipol policies that have not been approved, is this correct? Chief Edwards-Clemons – Yes. Commissioner Scott – Working in such a high pressure situation, this seems to be an emergency. O’Leary – The Chief is saying, they are abiding by the Lexipol (Fire Department) policies. This is the best practice right now. Commissioner Scott – We are trying to help. We are worried something could happen without these guardrails. Chief Ewards-Clemons – I will meet with you (chair) to go over the ones we have reviewed, get them to HR, and then filed with the Clerk’s office. Under the belief they are abiding by the policies they have Please contact Board Secretary if you cannot attend the meeting or need accommodations at (517) 483 - 4200 or LFDadmin@lansingmi.gov acknowledged. I know this is a huge red flag, and we are working as diligently as possible to fix this problem. We are going to use opioid funds to design programs to use those funds, specifically to opioid. Will see what part of EMT schooling focuses on opioids to use those funds towards schooling. Discussed direction of expanding some things in the community, community resource officer created a SAFE program to start doing. We would like to do a summer program. Partner with Hill Academy. Commissioner LaRue says this will really help with recruitment (summer programs). Happy to hear we are doing it. Chair Lawrence would like to thank Chief Odom for the monthly reports. 9. Old Business None 10. New Business 10.1. Motion responding to Mayor Schor’s request for a recommendation for Fire Chief appointment Under administrative rules, one is establishing admin rules for fire dept. 5th rule is recommendation to the mayor for the position of Fire Chief. It is not often that boards often do this. In the last 2 months, the board has acted on this twice. We are extremely happy this evening, to act on the request from Mayor Andy Shor, to make a recommendation to appoint Carrie Edwards-Clemons as Fire Chief of The Lansing Fire Department. Entertaining motion to act VP Commissioner Singh motioned that Lansing Fire Board recommends the appointment of Interim Fire Chief Carrie Edwards-Clemons to the position of Fire Chief of the Lansing Fire Department Commissioner La Rue seconds the motion Chair Commissioner thanks Chief Edwards Clemons for serving as interim the past few months, during the time of turmoil and opens the floor for Interim Chief Edwards-Clemons to say a few words and for questions. Fire for 23 years, FF Trainee no knowledge of anything. Brought in with a great bunch of trainers. She is still currently a licensed paramedic. Also, a fire inspector. A Unicorn knowing a little but about everything. She would like to show others, it is possible. Mother of 3, 5 grandchildren. She has also worked in public safety. Retired as deputy Fire Chief from Flint. Likes to sing and work with her hands. Likes to keep herself grounded. There are things that fire fighters see that some should never see. Mental health is important. We need to recognize their stress and show support. Please contact Board Secretary if you cannot attend the meeting or need accommodations at (517) 483 - 4200 or LFDadmin@lansingmi.gov We all want the same thing. Commissioner Willis – Happy with the appointment, comes with a Team approach. Sees we are getting a lot of questions from the public. See Edwards-Clemons bringing positivity. Can’t help what happened in the past, but we are moving forward and feels confident in moving forward. Suggest Chief comes to the board with items. Commissioner Scott – More than qualified for this position and sees the response to her leadership, which is positive. Has experience taking over a position that wasn’t being properly handled. This position will be hard, but the way Chief is handling it is admirable. What are the general thoughts or themes taking on as Chief Chief Edwards-Clemons – foundation remains unchanged, fire prevention and safety, prevention, training. We need our FF to be trained for the community and the world. We need to make sure they are ready to do their jobs. Training is the first focus to ensure they have the proper PPE, equipment, and tools. We need ot figure out what was good and working – make it better. Figure what wasn’t working and adjusting. First 90 days – cleaning house to find out where we are. We can’t tear everything down, because we have amazing workers. Commissioner Scott – Good answer. Commissioner LaRue – Impressed with resume. A lot of friends on this department and hear things. One thing he has heard, Edwards-Clemons time an interim -it was the smoothest the FD has ran, ever. Experience as a paramedic and ideas of enhancing EMS procedures. Chief Edwards-Clemons – Loved FD because of EMS. I liked helping people and seeing them get better. MOU in place to hire paramedics. Nationwide shortage of medics. Medics we get use LFD as a steppingstone. We must be in the community to change the things we want. Paramedics coming in now are not from Lansing, but they are medics. If we start from ground 0 and partner with the school with Fire I and Fire II. There are different ways we will catch the same fish. We need to look at all avenues to get Medics. Once we get these medics, they go to school, and we must brown out stations. We need to figure out how to use them for suppression while they are schooling. 17.10 and 17.20 talk about staffing. We need people on the scene. We need help with fighting the fire. Trying to keep the community and our workers safe. Commissioner Scott – WE are here to help. Full confidence in everyone here to do a good job. Like to take full accountability for those who I vote for and their actions. We are here to help. Commissioner Willis – Paramedics and this and that, Jerrod is being nice by not saying anything. We need to look at the model we are using and HOW we are doing services and delivering our EMS. The motion passed unanimously. 11. Requests for Commissioners to be Excused Please contact Board Secretary if you cannot attend the meeting or need accommodations at (517) 483 - 4200 or LFDadmin@lansingmi.gov Commissioner La Rue motioned to excuse Nelson and Purchase. Commissioner Scott Seconded Motioned Passes 12. Commissioner Comments Commissioner LaRue – we are here to help, would like to reiterate. VP Chair Singh – Congratulations 13. Public Comment (on any matter – speakers must state their name and address; time limit 3 minutes) Captain Neal – Congratulations, know she will be amazing appreciate the guidance she gives. Provides leadership and is bringing people up as well – after 11 years have not O’Leary – Strong collaborator with other city depts and Human Resources. Excited for this appointment. Gaukel – Cannot officially, is excited to work with Chief Edwards Clmeons with well thought out decisions. Chief Odom – Thank the fire board for appointing Chief Edwards-Clemons. Provides great leadership. Asks the questions needed and we are thankful. Chair Lawrence – Asked about award committee Chief Odom – Made the event to acknowledge the things they do. Gave out a community service award for those in the cold. They gave out blankets, coats, and pizza. These are the things we like to acknowledge. We honored dispatch and human resources this year as well. 14. General Order Station 1 – 1/16/26 will be the pinning ceremony for new Fire Chief Edwards-Clemons at 12pm in the apparatus bay. 15. Adjournment – 6:53pm