Martinez Lake Fire District Public Board Meeting Minutes 06/11/21

11:32PM Jun 11, 2021

Speakers:

Amberley Morales

Teresa Harrington

Charlie Bush

Larry Gabele

Heidi Inman

David Rogers

Chief Wade Garcia

John Caparell

Wes Wise

Shannon Brewer

Keywords:

board

rural metro

volunteers

fire

meeting

fire department

question

paid

fire chief

wade

fire station

board members

martinez

fishers

contract

community

motion

montoya

people

vote

Okay. All right, so when it is time for the call to the public, make sure you guys step up here and use the microphone because we are recording everything. And so it helps if we can hear. That would be great.

Go ahead.

Okay. All right, we're gonna go ahead and get started. So is that notice of public meeting we're at the Martinez Lake Fire District Governing Board public meeting, meeting Friday June, 11 2021 at 4:30pm. At the Martinez Lake fire station is now in session. So if we can all stand for the Pledge of Allegiance. I pledge of allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Okay, and so today we have, Charlie Bush, he's our president. We have myself Amberley Morales who's secretary treasurer of the board. We also have Teresa Harrington, who is with us today via phone. And then we have David Rogers, the fire districts attorney, and we have Larry Gable, our volunteer accountant. Sorry. All right, so

and we have our Cheif.

Yes and we have our Chief, Wade Garcia over here.

So we need to do a roll call of the board members,

that's what I just did.

So that's out of the way approval of the minutes of the previous minutes. Do you

I make a motion.

I'll second it.

Okay. Teresa, can you hear us?

I can hear you. I can barely hear Charlie.

Okay.

Okay. So, we got any correspondence we need to deal with?

Teresa I think you're in charge of correspondence.

Yes. Can you hear me?

Yeah. Can everybody hear? Okay.

Okay, so the Martinez Lake fire department, and the Martinez Lake fire board has worked extremely hard to have complete transparency with our community. That being said, there has been no correspondence received at the fire station from the US mail or at our email address. However, some board members have received phone calls and text messages on their personal phones. There are a couple of questions, asked and I would like to address those right now, so we can give you an answer. The first question is why did the fundraiser for Memorial Day weekend not happen? The fire department, and the fire board were not involved in this fundraising, where the buckets were supposed to be placed at the bars. We were simply asked to post the information on our social media which we did. So it didn't get done by whoever was going to plan it but it was not the fire board or the fire department. The second question. The next question is what are the duties of our fire chief? Our fire chief has over 30 years experience, and he is at the station during the week and on call 24 Seven. There's no reason for him to be at the fire station 24 Seven because he has a fully experienced staff in place. His role as Fire Chief is the role of any other Fire Chief with any other station, and no more. He is responsible for directing the activities of the fire department, and this is the sole authority and comand at the scene of a fire. The fire chief is responsible for directing all volunteer firefighters, and ensuring the firefighters have had training. In the future with the board and fire deprtment would like to ask you to please continue to ask us questions and give us feedback on what we're doing and how we're doing in the community, but we'd like for you to please contact either the fire station and leave a message for the board, or go through our email, our fire station email. Please don't contact us on our personal phones, because we don't act individually we act as a board, the email for the fire station, is martinuslakefd@gmail.com. And I don't know the phone number right off the top of my head but Chief Garcia can give that to you. That's it for correspondence.

Alrighty then we'll move on to old business and review our first item which is the discussion on the Fishers landing contract, and I am out of that. So Amberley and Teresa will handle that.

Yes, so, Fishers Landing has agreed to pay $25,000 for their main buildings so basically the restaurant bar store and boat shop. Alright and then an additional 75,000 to cover. Alright so this is a contract for service. So, all his additional areas will be included in this contract for service so you have, you know Pruitt, Fishers and Sweeds. Alright so that additional 75,000 will cover that, meaning if there is a fire, you aren't, and we show up to fight that fire, you're not going to get a huge bill. (Someone was interrupting, trying to ask a question) We have to at the call of the meeting, I mean the call to the public, we can discuss it then. Well, we/I can just clarify it then. Alright so I go ahead and vote, I make a motion to vote on that Teresa?

I agree, I vote to accept the contracts with Fisher's landing. All in favor. Aye. Aye.

So the next item in old business is, discussions, and we won't be voting on our actual grant writer but we're in the process of reviewing grant writers, because we have got to figure out some way to get additional money in here in terms of grants and there are some available, but the key for us is just beginning to getting a grant writer who has a good track record and doing this with fire departments and Wade is working on that, and I'll give let him give you a little preview of what he's been doing.

Okay. T is a, she's been working, worked for the city of Yuma for 10 years, she went into business for herself. She has her percentage rate is 95%. We're looking into her to do one of these, we have to do a contract, which is a year contract. We're looking at that we have a couple other ones. I don't have them in front of me right now. So, we will revisit this on our next meeting.

But that is the key to getting our assessed tax amounts, reduced, because that's the only way that's probably ever going to happen. So that's what we're in the process of doing.

Okay, I make a motion that the fire board moves along with interviewing and hiring a grant writer.

I second that.

I third. all in motion?

Aye,

Aye

And Wade do, you wat to give them a little review of the Narcan classes all that thats all about?

two days ago my whole staff here, they went through a class to administer Narcan. What that is, if there's an overdose for opioids we can then give it to them and bring them back till the ambulance gets here, we'll be going through another class to get certified in first responders, soon as they start that class the next meeting. I'll let you guys know no cost to the department at all it's all going to be handled in house with another agency.

Alrighty. Okay, so that takes care of the old business. Look at the new business. So what we're trying to do is keep down expenses of payroll as much as we can, and health benefits is a portion of that. So, we need to. We're going to pay half, our employess are going to pay half from now on, of the health benefits for that employee, and they're going to pay fully paid for whatever dependents, they've got. So that's going to help our budget out somewhat. You want to make a motion?

I make a motion.

I seconded it.

All in favor?

Aye.

Aye.

Okay. All right, the next one is we're going to vote on changing our insurance agent group to Montoya group. All in favor?

I make a motion that we change our agent to Montoya group, it does not increase the cost of our insurance at all, their local and I make a motion that we change.

I second it.

All in favor?

Aye. Well, I was just going to say, part of it is an effort to keep some of this local as much as possible, and that we have better communication with them, and that's what we're trying to do here, and that's why we've got Wade Noble involved in our legal staff.

All right, and then we're also going to vote on the new budget that we're going to be turning into the county that is due very soon. I've handed it all out to everybody, if you guys need a copy, there's a couple more copies up here. So, I make a motion to pass that budget.

I second the motion.

All right. All in favor?

Aye.

Aye

Im a home ower

Once second we're gonna do the call to the public.

for the record I am going to object to these proceedings

Okay.

no prior notice was given.

Okay. In a minute we will do a call to Public in just a minute and you can come up here.

We are not taking any questions now you'll have a chance to talk in a minute.

Its not a question it's an objection.

Well object to whatever you want to object to.

You're interrupting I'm stating for the record that I have an objection to the way this, this board is proceeding.

Sir when it's your turn. I'm going to do the call to the public and I will call you up here. And then you can come up here and you can voice what you want to voice, but we do have a time limit as well, so. Okay. All right, so with that being done we can move on.

Okay so the next item on new, new businesses the discussion of the fire code the were being, basically, forced to accept, and Wade will kind of brief you on that just a touch too.

Okay. For this fire code, the fire code that exists now Rural Metro has. Okay, so it's going to be the 2018, we're stil going to have the 2018. You guys have 30 days to look it over, it'll be in the fire station you guys can look at it, and we will vote on that in about 30 days but everybody can look at the, the 2018 fire code that we have, it has nothing to do with taxes or anything, it's just a fire code that we adopted, with, Rural Metro you guys will look at it, I do believe we have a copy

I have a copy somewhere.

Okay, we'll get you guys a copy of that, it'll be right here in the fire station you guys would come and look at it. You guys can object anything that's in there okay. You bet.

And that and that is mandated by the state.

Yes, mandated by the state.

So, basically going to accept the same fire code that Rural Metro was on.

Yeah, and it's mandatory in order for us to be compliant. Correct? Right, yes. Yeah. Okay, next.

Okay so next item is the budget, and

we got that, we did that. We did budget we voted on that.

Oh, we already did that.

Yeah, so now we're just call to the public.

So the next thing is a call to the public and we're just going to go through these, as they come in here and we want you to come up and speak into the mic so it can be recorded. So got your name and you comment. Wes Wise your the first on the program.

So, this agreement with Fishers is a one year agreement or uh?

Yes,

Renewable every year?

One year agreement.

It'll be negotiable every year,

but what we're, what we're trying to do is we're trying to get enough grant money that we can reduce everybody's tax bill here, and reduce of course Fishers tax bill. So that's the effort here.

oh sir you can't add any more. Unfortunately, yes. Unfortunately, it's supposed to be at the beginning and I allowed one more, (member of the public trying to add another question, the time to submit questions hass already passed and closed)

One more question, how do you make donations? Do you make a check out to the fireboard, to the district, what do you do?

Sorry I missed that

you can give a donation to the Martinez Lake Fire District. You can write out a check. And then we'll submit it in our budget, you know, by the way, I mean we got a little over $40,000 Last year, in donations. It's really helped a lot this year. You know, selling T shirts and donations, that's a big plus when we get the community involved in this.

Yeah. All right, Heidi. If youd like to come up?

Okay, so I just have a few comments. Um I wasn't able to attend the last meeting. But I did review the minutes. I would like to note for the public here that you guys understand that now because of the breakdown between the district and Rural Metro that Rural Metro if they have to respond to a fire at your property, you will be getting a separate bill from Rural Metro, based on the Soule letter last month that came in and I don't think that was made clear during the last meeting. So just want to make sure everybody understands that because that's what I understand from that letter and I think that's a serious concern for us, because obviously if there is a fire that means that we are not necessarily covered if Rural Metro also responds we will be out of pocket for that (inaudible). So I just want to make sure that everybody is aware of that. This is a very serious problem for our department. On going, I think that the board has really not been diligent in, not putting forward negative comments about Rural Metro and our fire chief. And I think that the board, really needs to make an effort to not allow rumors and false statements, and to correct anything in their record that has been said that's untrue in the past, to try and amend its relationships with Rural Metro, and with the former fire chief. I think it's important for everyone in this room, and our entire community to know that prior to the new fire chief coming on, that we had two full time volunteers that lived here, that could have staffeded our fire trucks, and that as a result of their termination of Mr. Johnson. They lost those two volunteers, and as I understand it, they made zero effort to get those volunteers back on staff, which is a serious problem because we need more than the staff that we have here to respond in an event of a fire, especially if we're going to be getting billed from Rural Metro as well. I don't know of any further public recruitment for additional volunteers. I have a serious concern with the budget. I think the budget currently is too high. I think that we need to reassess our staffing. I don't think we can afford the current staffing, and I dont think that has been by the board. I am very concerned about the fact that there is a lawyer sitting here, when you have two members of the public who are lawyers that could volunteer on behalf of the Board who have not been asked to do anything pro bono. As far as I know this gentleman here is not offering his services pro bono, the public has not been told what his hourly rate is, but I will note that he's probably charged for his travel here, and will try and will charge for his travel back and will continue to bill us for money that we don't have as a community. So I think that the board really needs to be more transparent in terms of all the money that its spending that our community doesn't have. I also would like the board to know, that is not timely informing the community and of its actions before they take place, and there's been a long pattern of that they have not been transparent. They are not telling anyone in the community, what's going on, and they've done nothing but perpetuate the rumors that have been on going. So I think that is a serious problem that they have going forward that they need to address, hopefully in the very near future.

Yeah, that's what you could put a couple but this is, it's. (to someone trying to put in another question)

This is a diatribe

yeah,

Its slander ,

yes,

you should have been at the first meeting then everything went down you have not been to every meeting, you have not been to every meeting. Let's just be honest

yeah,

You have not been here, you were not here till Phillip got you on board.

Yeah,

I was not here because I read every agenda. And there was nothing about what was actually going on here.

Okay.

Well you need to pay attention to what is going on.

Yeah. Yeah. Time Is up

Time is up.

Yes. Yeah,

I have been to every single one of the meetings

okay I just want everyone to understand that Im.

Okay. Okay people, We need to get back in order. Hello?

when you dont like what I have to say

No , we've listened to you.

to you that your time dear.

This is just a show, no more.

Yeah. Yeah. All right.

Okay. First of all

Thank you for your comments Heidi and we will take you under considertaion.

Rural Metro will not be called out here. Okay, they won't be, they'll still do their medical fire will not, I have a mutual aid agreement with the city of Yuma, I have a mutual aid agreement with Welton fire, and I do have whatever else that I need will come this way. Okay, they're not going to charge you to come out here, because they're not going to be called. They won't.

Thank you.

and we have to be fully staffed in order to meet the conditions of the grants. So, it is what it is we're doing our best to cut costs, we have a shoestring budget as it is, we are asking people to do pro bono work, We are working on that with Wade Nobles office as of now, or not as of now. Already we've been talking to him about it, and our chief over there. How many? You have several, several volunteer firefighters that are getting trained in this up coming month that are going to be included in that umm. That first responders class. So, yeah.

Wade, how many, how many volunteers do we have on staff at the moment?

Seven. We have seven volunteers.

And does that include any of the previous volunteers?

no other than other than what we just picked up two more.

Okay.

As far as the rumors go

We are making progress in terms of volunteers, and we do have some the live here locally, which is a big plus because we don't have tohave full time people then.

And we have people that were volunteering before that are now coming back, so we will see them again.

We can't just take a volunteer off the street if I can inject inject here. Wade has to get the volunteers together and make sure they are trained before he can leave them at the fire department, that you can't just volunteer without any training. Is that correct, Wade?

Yes.

Yes. And we do have trained volunteers these volunteers are in training. You know and some point are a little further advanced than others but some of them are volunteers that have been here previously. Under Mr. Philip Johnson's purview.

Yes. All right. So, David. All right, we have several, but we do have to

Yeah, mine will be a lot lot different. Let me say, that the board here has a tough job. I will say that. I'm, John Caparell and i'm an attorney. This is the first meeting that I've been noticed on. So I have several questions that I submitted in writing for this board, one, and before I go to the questions I'd like to state my objection earlier that a lot of the matters that have transpired and called upon with respect to the agenda, were objectionable, and I want my objection noted and it's improper. One, what parties or owners have not paid their full 2020 tax assessor's?

Uh, Larry Gabele?

You would have to ask the county that question.

He said you'd have to ask the county that question.

So that means that the board has no knowledge of which people have paid or unpaid.

We have a dollar amount of what has been paid and what hasn't been paid and you could review that and last month minutes, we go over all of that in detail. However, I cannot give you a list right off the top of our head, if we've dug into it we

We have no ability to affect that. The county assessor collects the money, and we have no ability to affect them.

Well Larry Gabeles last letter stated that they were possibly ten. Don't hold me to that Larry but 10 or 15 properties that have not paid.

that could possibly be and maybe more.

I think there was just a dollar amount on that letter.

To clarify that. I have a dollar amount.

Okay. So my next question is. Do any of the board current board members have any conflict of interests currently or foreseeably in the future that they need to recuse themselves, either through non payment of assessments, or being an on site contractual party that they have an apparent conflict, and you have your counsel on board here that should review that because of board members taking an action that they have a conflict of interest in monetary or otherwise they're not allowed to sit on a board. Do, have, do you have an answer that question or you do not know if anyone

I have an answer that question, I am on the board I would recuse myself from any voting that occurs on anything that has to do with Fishers Landing, just like I didn't vote on accepting our contract. That was voted on by Amberley and Teresa.

Okay, well, the board has voted on changing insurance providers.

That does not anything to do with a conflict of interest for me.

Okay, but if you haven't paid and haven't executed a contract with with the Martinez Lake Fire District, then you have a conflict of interest.

Fishers Landing has already paid a portion.

I understand that, but are you, have you signed and executed a contract with the Marinez Lake Fire District? It's important to know, I'm not attacking you.

No.

So you have no signed a contract with Martinez Fire District.

We have one on the table, that is, that is in the process of being signed.

Yes.

Do we have an expect date, expectation of a date that you will be signing that contract?

Monday.

Excellent. I think that's really important to tell people. I think, I think, I think you're taking this in an adversarial fashion, and that's not the point. The point is to be transparent and let people know what you're doing, you say, Hey, I'm signing this contract on Monday, and here's my obligation. And people really would like to hear that Charlie.

Well, they're hearing it.

Next, this is more for the Board's counsel, who is the agent for service of process and or notice for this board, legal

for right now, currently it has not been changed we are still working with the state on correcting all this. So right now, it would be, you could provide notice to the station. But going forward, we're correcting it with the state to put our name on the states website for service of process. So the the Noble law office.

So, you're telling me now that if I have a complaint that I need to file at Yuma superior court as a real party of interest that I can do so with your office?

Correct.

Okay, very good. The next. Now the final question is on insurance. I think I saw the agenda, and it said that the they were the board was changing to Montoya and I wanted to object to that, based on it's a bad decision I've spoken to insurance brokers today, and they said that Montoya will go through the same underwriting and insurance company that we currently have, which is the National Volunteer Firefighters Association. The only difference is, board members, is that money is going to get paid a commission. Why do we need to go through them? I did your homework for you for free. At $580 an hour and I contacted insurance brokers, and I'd be more than happy to share that with the board.

Please do.

I'm not here as an adversary, I'm here as a person to just get this thing going and if it fails, it will be on the board shoulders not on mine because I'm trying to help it.

We welcome the help. okay and we are doing...

I think the board made a mistake by, by umm agreeing to change the provider even the fire chief knows that nobody's been consulted him that switching is basically giving Montoya a commission.

Well, please leave the information with us and we will definitely discuss it.

I will also offer the board that Eric friends is with Yuma risk management, insurance company, and I spoke to Eric friends, and he said that this fear mongering over insurance and failure to get coverage is wholly unfounded. What do I mean by that, people. A lot of people have been thinking about the fire departments here just because we need insurance coverage that's not true. He educated me, and I spent a great deal of time with him and here's my policy, I'll even give it to the board members, and you'll see under it, it says protection class code tier 10 That's the highest level of fire that you can get. So whether the department is here or not, it doesn't benefit me one bit. I pay the highest tiered rent for my home. This is my home. I pay the highest tiered rate. And it doesn't matter, it's not going to go down to a tier five and tier two and the fire chief, if he has any objections and can correct me. I'm open to that, but we're all paying tier 10 we're all paying tier 10 Eric Trenz works for Yuma risk management I was on the phone with him for two hours trying to get assurances, he's even volunteered. Mr. Frenz has volunteered to go on telephonic with this board to explain to the board as homeowners, how the insurance pyramid is affected or not affected by a fire department. I think as a board member, I want to know that I would want to know that, and, you know, I move that the fire board at least listen to him. If not this meeting. Schedule the agenda for the next meeting, and I'll have him on board, he can answer everyone's discussion, I know Heidi had an issue with that and Im helping this board out of my own time.

So we're all sitting on the board because we love you care about this community.

We do too. And I am not an advesary. But I won't be buffaloed or bullied by anyone.

No and listen. That is not the case, but we were told at the very beginning when this first started, you know, when Philip Johnson head this up, that that was going to be the case for us so yes maybe maybe many of us are uneducated in that part but that's where it came from, from the very beginning.

Well I'll offer my email to you.

Yes, please do.

Well, this is a bit of a process, because we are in the highest tier for a reason. We have not got, you know enough staff for this fire department and we have not got enough equipment. So that's part of our process for the insurance and that Wade Garcia is working on. So, so we'll end up graduating down this we get to a better tier at some point depends on our fire department (inaudible)

that's, that's false, and here's why its false Charlie because I asked him that I said, let's say we have a full blown Fire Department, what's the lowest tier that it will go to Mohak Welton, Welton right here, is that a five. (unadible) Tier five. Not that much. I paid, $ 1000 and my policy here is 1700 and $1,000 on top of that, for fire insurance for something I don't really need. Im covered by America money if my house catches fire, I give a rat's you know what, let it burn. It's not gonna, they're not gonna get to it in timeis a slab.

We need to call time on this

Maybe I would call for a community's meeting or something, and I'll help you with this.

Okay, well thank you for your information, and Wade has got a comment on that.

Let me explain this to you guys. Ok. When I, when I look up Martinez Lake Martinez Lake's ISO rating is a negative 10. That's the highest you can get what I want to do is, is in the next three months, I want to see if we get down I'm not saying we'll get down to a six or a five or a four or a three, but we were going to work on it,

but it won't affect, chief, Can I call you chief? It won't affect my premium.

that's incorrect

It wont affect my premium. I've never seen a premium go down, and I own multiple businesses. The issue was coverage.

It was the beginning when we were told about this, it was all about coverage.

I was told from a commercial insurance broker that that's not an issue that Welton, that Welton obtains it, there are some parts of Welton Hyder Sentinel.

There are seven, eight,

there are 10 there are 10.

We got a time on this. Yes.

Id be willing to help you out.

Yes, We'll take your information after the meeting. Yes please,

before it gets, before it gets ugly and resorts to legal stuff.

What else we got?

adjournment and then announce the next meeting will be in August.

Okay, so we're going to adjourn this board meeting. And our next next meeting will be the 13th of August, at the same time 430 And we're going to do some research in on some of these issues and I mean, We appreciate you guys bring us information because you know we don't have all the information. I mean most of us are here just because we're concerned citizens. So, so this meeting is adjourned.

I make a motion that we adjourn the meeting about on, hold on. Go ahead, Theresa in favor. She made a motion to adjourn the meeting. All in favor. Aye. Aye.