Fire Control District - Regular Meeting

Alright, fellas. Here we get ready. Here we go. Cool. I'd like to call this meeting to order of the city Deer Park Fire Control District. First order on the business, I would like to welcome our newest member to the board, mister Daniel Loverczyk. Do we have anyone signed up to speak?

No, sir.

No, we do not. Alright then. Let's move into our agenda. First item on the agenda will be the consideration of and action on changing the time of the fire control district meeting moving forward from 05:45PM to 05:30PM. Chair the chair will entertain a motion to that effect.

Make a motion we change the time for our control district meeting forward from 05:45 to 05:30PM.

We have a motion on the floor. Do we have a second?

Second.

We have a second here with mister Mike. Is there a discussion? Would anyone like to walk us through the motive for the change?

The motive for the change was to essentially give time back to everybody by moving it up just because it was like this in the past. It's not need to be that that in the future, and this benefits everybody.

Fair enough. How does the board feel about that? Any comment from the board?

Works for me. Works for

me. Alright.

We have a motion on the floor, properly seconded, for consideration of an action on changing the time of the fire control district meeting moving forward from 05:45PM to 05:30PM. All in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. All opposed say nay. Hearing none, motion passes.

Second item on the agenda. Consideration of an action on acceptance of the proposed fiscal year twenty twenty six-twenty twenty seven FCP EMSD budget submitted by the Deer Park Fire Department. The chair will entertain a motion to that effect.

I make a motion to action on acceptance of the proposal fiscal year twenty twenty six, twenty twenty seven SEP EMSD budget submitted by the Deer Park Fire Department.

We have a motion. Do we have a

second? Second.

We have a second by mister Westmoreland. Is there any discussion?

Yes, sir.

Yes, ma'am. Yes, sir.

I'll go through this very quickly. Just as a reminder, the revenue for the district comes from sales tax. Sales tax has been performing very strongly, and we do expect to bring in more this year than was anticipated, which is always great. But we do tend to budget conservatively just because that can be a little volatile. And then we have noticed a slight downward a slightly downward trend very recently, so we wanna stay conservative when we budget.

But we are anticipating just over 2,000,000 coming in next fiscal year. And then the other thing that I wanna talk about real quickly, this is all in your packet, so hopefully, you had some time to to look it over prior to this evening. But this is really the page that I wanna highlight. It shows a high level summary of each division within the district. And so you've got fire, EMS, and our fire marshal.

I wanna talk about personnel expenses and then capital items. So for personnel, we have a CPI placeholder in there right now. The CPI is updated every two months, and that's typically what we use to determine if we're gonna have any sort of cost of living adjustment on our salaries. We do expect another CPI to come out in July, and so that will probably change the budget numbers here. Not significantly, but we do anticipate that to change.

And then health care costs. So right now, we have a placeholder of 11 and a half percent, which is what we've heard is the average for the insurance pool for medical services that we're in, which is unfortunate. It's higher than we wanted it to be. Hopefully, that's not what we end up having, but that is likely to change in the budget as well. So when this is brought back to the board in July for final blessing before it goes to city council, we do expect some of that to change.

And if you're just for edification, the first line in here for departments that are relative emergency medical services, for example, there's a line in here that says personnel and related. That's where that money is allocated. For the remainder of expenditures, services, supplies, repair, and maintenance, there are some slight increases in the budget, but they're all pretty routine. The cost of everything is just increasing. Testing of apparatus, software applications, and subscriptions, things like that.

There's nothing egregious in the budget. For capital, there was nothing requested except for the lease payment of the truck that that's already, you know, been committed. So beyond that, the the fire budget is very routine, very conservative, self sustaining. So it's the district's doing well, and it's what we wanna see. If don't have any specific questions or more in-depth questions about revenue or expenditures, we have everyone here. But otherwise, very cut and dry.

I have one kind of a curiosity type question. Just under services, I think it's 4,200. The consultants went from 11,000 to 40,000. So I don't know if there was something

Do you remember which department by chance?

I do not.

The district we contract with a company that does sales tax compliance services for us. So let's say there's businesses in the city that are not paying their sales taxes to the district as they should be they find that and then we'll make that correction and you know we'll get the revenue from then on. So that number we budget 40,000 because it just really depends on what they find. We only have we're anticipating only having to pay 11,000 for their services this year. Next year that could change if they end up finding something significant. So it's budgeted the same as last year we budgeted 40,000 we're budgeting again 40,000 It's just that we're only anticipating to spend 11,000 this year for those services.

Okay. Thank you very much.

You're welcome.

While we're there, memory fails, but I want to say we're in the third year of payback when the same thing. There was someone who overpaid. Is that off the book yet? Do we still have that?

No. We have two, actually, that we're paying back at this point. And they're still on the books as of right now.

Okay. Just couldn't remember. Time slips away.

Yes, sir.

I have one question. Your comment about the 11% medical, and you said that you had heard. Is that a number that has been where where did that is that number that's been physically looked at at other companies or it's just asking around?

Our medical insurance were a member of the Texas Health Insurance School, and they communicated to their members that the industry average right now they're seeing is 11 and a half percent. Based on our loss ratio and other things, they'll look at each individual insurrection, and they'll determine what our rate increase is going to be. We just don't have a a firm answer yet, but we have heard from our insurance.

Okay. I was just curious where it was coming from.

For lack of better term.

Okay. Thank you. We have

heard that directly from you.

Any other questions, comments at this time? We do we approve this in July, is final approval. Correct me if I'm

wrong. Yes.

Yes. We

have the budget calendar up there. Do they need to

that you will approve or you'll adopt the budget. And then that goes to council. So you'll have your public hearing, and then council will approve the budget in August. August.

All right, very good.

And we'll bring any updates to you at the public hearing as

well. Sure. Anything else? All right, we have a proper motion for consideration of an action on acceptance of the proposed fiscal year twenty twenty six-twenty twenty seven FCP EMSD budget submitted by the Deer Park Fire Department. All in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. All opposed say nay. Hearing none, the ayes have it. Motion passes. Last item on the agenda, to schedule public hearing on the proposed fiscal year FY twenty twenty six-twenty twenty seven FCP EMSD budget.

The chair will entertain a motion to that effect. Make

a motion to schedule a public hearing for the fiscal year twenty twenty six, twenty twenty seven fire control EMS board for the budget at 05:30 on 06/15/2026.

Second.

I apologize. Did you say June 26?

June 15. June 15. 06/15/2026.

Very good. We have a motion. Do we have a second? Second. We have a second. We have a proper motion and a second to schedule a public hearing on the proposed fiscal year twenty twenty six-twenty twenty seven FCP EMSD budget at 05:30 on June 15.

Just as a reminder with all budget hearings and budget meetings, it is critical that we have a forum. These are meetings that we cannot reschedule with the way that the state law requires us to hold them. So please

keep that in mind, and

we will conduct calendar invitations.

All in favor signify by saying aye. All opposed say nay. With that, the motion passes. Hearing none, motion passes. And our meeting is adjourned.