Fiscal Court Committees - Regular Meeting

yesterday afternoon our County Clerk asked if he could have a few minutes to speak so I told him absolutely so mr. Smith I will give you the floor okay as this committee I'm just going to read what I have written normally I don't do that like a little bit more conversational but I want to be very precise in my language

As this committee takes on the task of reviewing Hardin County Emergency Services, let me start that at the top. As this committee takes on the task of reviewing how Hardin County Emergency Services has handled several incidents, I felt it important to raise a serious concern that has yet to be addressed. During the May primary election, a poll worker fell and was injured. The following day, she came into the office of the government building to file an incident report. The woman is not employed by the clerk's office, and the incident did not take place on county property. After several attempts by the county clerk's office and the sheriff's office, in a very long time, the deputy emergency management director finally showed up to complete the incident paperwork with the injured party. Following that incident, the deputy EM director met with the clerk about the incident. The deputy EM director repeatedly demanded that the clerk report this as a workers' compensation claim and an OSHA incident. The clerk repeatedly explained to this individual that this individual was not an employee of the clerk and that it did not take place in the clerk's office. The clerk advised the deputy EM director that the county attorney had been consulted and she concurred. Despite all of this, the deputy EM director filed a claim in the name of the county clerk's office with CACO's insurance office. This caused the clerk and the clerk's CFO to devote hours of their time to undo this. Hours were wasted during the busiest days of an election. The clerk and clerk's CFO were diverted from essential work to fix someone else's blunder. I believe it's entirely appropriate for fiscal court to reimburse the clerk's office for the CFO's wasted time. During an election, it is commonplace for the clerk's office staff to work overtime. They often have to complete their normal workload on top of additional election duties. I've waited for months for an explanation or an apology for this incident. It's only one of the many incidents that have given me cause to believe that the safety and security of the 27 employees of the clerk's office and the clerk are not a concern or priority.

That's all I have. Thank you. Do we have any comments from any committee members? Do you have the documented hours?

So it's difficult to document. There were a number of phone calls, a number of emails spent over two days. So I way underestimated the number of hours that Nicole spent on it. Well exceeded probably three and a half to four hours, not documented three hours. Now, I'm not worried about the money, but I am concerned about my staff's time during a critical period. being wasted.

Just a question. Did you send me an email about this? I don't remember. I know several of the...

So one of the several emails I sent, I don't know, Judge, that I emailed you, but I know the deputy judge was emailed, copied the treasurer on it, and she was the one that actually had the answer right in her back pocket because we have one of the best treasurers in the state. We have a workers' comp insurance that covers co-workers during their time. And If somebody had done their due diligence, it wouldn't have created... Even if I had had the legal responsibility, someone shouldn't be filing insurance claims in the name of the county clerk's office. Only the county clerk should do that. That shouldn't be a difficult thing for, frankly, anybody to understand. The county clerk is a separate constitutionally elected office. I am not a subset of fiscal court. I am a part of county government, but I am an independently elected constitutional officer, and I should be treated as such.

Brian, correct me if I'm wrong, but full workers are paid via through fiscal court. That's correct. Therefore, they are technically employees 1099 under fiscal court.

Yeah, I can't explain the legal IRS tax designation, but they are not my employees. We, as the board chair of the portable elections, um, we tell them where to report. We were responsible for their training. We're responsible for documenting their take attendance, all those other things, but we're not their employer. So your supervisor, you're not, I think that's a fair, fair description.

Have there been cases in the past over the historical context of where people have fallen and injured?

Oh, yes. That I don't know. You know, our population of poll workers tend to be a little bit, 70% of them are over the age of 70. And we have quite a few who are in their 80s. And they're great poll workers. and they do a great job, but as we all get a little older, you tend to have a few more mobility issues. It's gonna happen to me, it's gonna happen to everyone else in the room if we live long enough. But there's a difference between, this particular individual sought medical treatment, and so that became a more serious issue than somebody who may stumble, they get a Band-Aid and they never even report it to me. Sometimes those things happen, but... This particular incident happened at Colvin Community Center, and I'm thankful that it did because the community center staff there is aces. They're 100% professional. They filled out their own incident report. They had a full emergency kit available, so they were able to get the lady bandaged up. But she had a small head wound, but it needed stitches, and that was the difference from something that would be a little bit more typical.

Anybody else have any other discussion?

Well, I feel, Brian, that, you know, now that I'm aware of some of the details, I can definitely look into it more. I'd like to have maybe an opportunity to do that or bring it before this committee. It's my first reaction, but maybe I'm wrong. But I'd like... I'll be happy to sit down with you and see what we can come up with here, or at least action that wants to understand what the appropriate, make sure that we understand exactly what is appropriate for this, and make sure that we, you know, emergency management department understands what should happen in the future. if it's different than what did happen. I don't know enough about it to really comment on it too much at this point. So I'd like to have some time to sit down with you and just go and get the people involved together and just to make sure that we understand the facts, what happened and what needs to happen in the future. That's all I want to do.

Sure.

Okay. All right, that brings up, Pat, you don't have anything still?

Actually, I do have one, and it came to light, as you know. It came to light, actually, just yesterday afternoon late. In our last court meeting, you know, it was stated that Mel Irwin, who was a retired magistrate and a lieutenant with the Elizabethan Fire Department, passed away, and everyone extended their condolences to the family, and at the time there was no arrangement, but For your calendar and for informational purposes, on September the 18th, from 4 to 8 in the afternoon at the State Theater, there will be a celebration of life for Mel. Mel, as you know, was, again, a magistrate and was a retired E-Town firefighter, and we've got some other retired firefighters in the area. I don't know if they had the pleasure of working with Mel. I did, and he was a He was a fixture in the community, and he'll be sorely missed, but if you can make that to that celebration of life, I'm sure the family would appreciate it. Again, extend our sympathy to the family of Miller. Thank you.

Mark, anything? No, sir. Talk about the ER.

It opens, they go by Monday, 14th.

Hopefully that'll help us out on ambulances, maybe shorter runs.

We went up and met with their leadership last week, got a tour of the facility. Very nice facility. It's going to be a good addition to that area of Parkland County. There'll be a learning curve as to what's appropriate to go and not go there, but yeah, we're pretty excited to have that. That was going to be my question. Yeah. So, our rule of thumb going forward is going to be anything that could potentially lead to an admission, we're going to try to avoid taking there. They do have full x-ray, full CT. just about everything you can do as far as lab. There's a couple things that they'll have to send out for lab, but I think it's a send out to the local hospital, so it's not, it could be a, you know, a couple hour turnaround. So, you know, they don't have trauma services, of course, so stuff like that we're going to try not to do. Some of the respiratory capabilities are going to be limited, but Right now, they don't have respiratory therapists to manage ventilators and stuff like that. For those that kind of run the mill, cough cold, runny nose, back pain, stuff like that, it's going to be perfect for that.

I don't think you said, but this is the RAC.

Yeah, the RAC. Their official name is Baptist Health ER and Urgent Care RAC, but it's at the corner of Centennial and Dixie Highway.

Out of curiosity, is that going to, Are they going to request any kind of transfers coming out of there from us?

So according to Baptist Health EMS leadership, they're going to try to handle everything, but that doesn't mean that we won't help.

Occasionally for Baptist Health Card, depending on the acuity and stuff. Appreciate it, Mark. Yes, sir. 9-1-1. Mr. Leo.

I'm going to print it out, non-copy, so I'm sure those who want those can get those. It's just something we do every year. It's a support contract for our controllers, the equipment that helps us process all calls coming into the facility. Support for hardware and software for a year, $40,597.81. I've probably seen this in the past. It's already passed through Jenny's office and it's been approved. So we have to get this on court agenda.

I'm ready with support, I'm assuming.

This is comparable to what we paid last year? A few hundred dollars more.

It goes up every year a few percentages. as the life of the equipment gets older, it goes up a little bit.

But, and equipment costs and everything else. But, inflation.

Anybody have any questions?

We couldn't run.

And this one, this one around.

Mentioned last committee that our battery backup solution that powers the 911 center has passed away. We're trying to get a replacement on it. This is the replacement cost via Motorola and the Kentucky's master agreements associated with the purchase of it. That total cost is $157,500. It's like a 14-week lead time, I believe, give or take, depending on transit.

This is for a backup battery, is that right?

Battery backup solution for the entire facility. It's a big piece of equipment that burnt up about a month ago now.

How long ago did you say that? I'm so lost.

I'm sorry.

Gauge about 15 years. We've got about 11 and some change at ours. We did some research through some engineers and they determined there was some input power issues with some alarms that we got. It lasted over 30 minutes to kind of burn up some input equipment. Not battery backup side equipment, but utility input. So it's been filtered through Richard for our PICO insurance claims and I believe it's going to be covered. So there really won't be a

the insurance insurance claim Lisa and their staffs already drafted a resolution for court it goes under the master agreement but since it's going to be our asset after it's been purchased by the insurance company we needed something to go through court saying and all that so just be aware that that will be coming through your packet

This is the quote from Motorola, and then the master agreement behind it that supports how it works, languages in the master agreement for that equipment. I think you're looking at line seven in the master agreement. On page two of the master agreement, you see line seven, the language about third-party UPSs and generators and stuff like that's in there. We've already buttoned all that up and it should be pretty, you know, it's all in there. Motorola does a lot of third-party vendors. Motorola is the entity that supports, you know, those entities.

Has the issue been solved as far as, obviously, they say they're willing to, you know, insurance bodies will cover this, but what about from the utility side?

I don't, I don't know.

that's something between I guess that's gonna be my question if you're going to pursue segregation against the utility we want to make sure our we would try to recover deductible to

Yeah, we submitted everything we had based off what we can identify as a root cause. Gave it to the engineer, and the engineer, you know, he did all his work up. Come up with his solutions and provided it to the insurance company. So, we believe it was input issues. So, based off what we had, what we provided to him. So, moving forward, it'll be between the insurance company, I guess, and our company, so...

So let's just make a note to Fred's, let's check with Richard on that and see if we can make sure it does turn out to be something that the fire company is responsible for.

Yeah, because they'll ask us to sign, I guess, a proof of loss whenever they bring the claim to us. If we sign a proof of loss, we'll make sure there's no suffocation language barring us from pursuing our deductible.

Well, we keep you around.

Did everybody get a copy of that one?

I've got an extra video.

I do have one more item that just came to light today, but I want to go ahead. It's not for the agenda coming up court, but I want to go ahead and present it. I'll pass this around. This is an MOU that I've already sent to the county attorney's office to review. Basically it's an MOU with the state that 911 will enter into to be able to use what's called their serves radio system. So basically the state has went around and put in an entire 700 megahertz radio system throughout the entire state and is allowing public safety entities throughout the state to join it. We currently do have our own radio system. I'm not saying this is gonna replace it. But the opportunity is being presented where we can get on the system and be able to use it as backup solutions, interoperability solutions. Or anybody really in that county who wants to join the system, we end up having to sign the same MOU and can actually participate in using the system. Currently, I wanna say there's two sites in the county.

It's 700, it's pretty robust.

It does require a little bit of revenue to purchase the equipment to talk on it, radios, mobiles, portables. On the behalf of the 911 Center, we'd be purchasing a, it's called a consulate. It's a radio with a power supply. It goes into our radio system's core where dispatchers can actually control it and talk into the system. So eTown, I believe, is going to that system shortly. They'll be utilizing it, and then we'll be able to have access to it also. In addition to that, we'll get some demo radios, and we'll put it in the hands of subscribers and let them play, see how the coverage is, and see if they want to participate in it also. Same with EMS. If EMS chooses it, that's something they want to participate in. In the future, they can start developing subscriber-based equipment and join the system also and be able to have a secondary resource to talk, you know, to the center or amongst each other throughout the county in addition to the one resource they have now. So that's all you have, right? Just one county of resources to give the second one. So the system doesn't cost anything. It's just the equipment that, you know, to talk on the system is what the cost would be.

So there's no subscription? No, no, no.

On the state side, pretty much anybody that's public safety can join it. You just have to buy the approved devices, you know, and the state will set them up and give your own little talk group you can talk on. That's what it is at the moment. As soon as the county attorney, I guess, reviews this and approves this, I guess I can reach out to you, Chris, and say maybe we can get it on the next court's agenda without having to go to committee again. It's just a simple MOU sign between the judge and the state.

Are you anticipating just a ballpark area about the equipment?

Based off what I know, in order for the dispatch center to communicate to the system, we're probably looking at 10, maybe 15 grand for our equipment, because it's a bigger piece. And then subscriber base is just what a radio or a handheld or a vehicle radio costs that entity. So if Mark was to outfit his entire fleet... You know, to get on the system, you know, it could be a substantial cost to his organization if you wanted to utilize it. But if it's just smaller footprints at the sheriff's office, SRTT, maybe they want to be on a separate channel. It's all encrypted, right? It's an encrypted channel. It can't be heard from the general public. So they're doing special operations and whatnot, you know, a selected group of people. radios to be, you know, smaller footprint on their calls. And the sheriff's office would be the same thing. They have to sign their own MOU in order to participate in the system. On the dispatch side, for us, because we dispatch for them, we want to make sure we can monitor those talk groups. So that's why I want to get it sorted on our end first.

This is a trunking system?

It is a trunking 700 megahertz system. Yes.

Mike, what is, I mean... We have already got all this equipment that everybody can talk to. What would this add to?

Redundancy. Redundancy and backup. Cannot plan for more redundancy and backup. We've had an outage just recently that could have hurt us really bad if we didn't have redundancies built into that.

So this would be a backup system? It is a backup system for us.

It's not going to be our main solution. It would be a backup entity for us. in any aspect that we could use it.

So if a tornado or something comes through and wiped everything out?

I mean, could have wiped out their stuff too, so then we have nothing, but hopefully it wiped out theirs, not ours, but yeah, I mean, in essence, we have an outage in the center where our consoles don't talk to our system. We can, you know, utilize equipment, additional equipment to talk to this other system, so. If our core fails, which is behind holes, if that dies, the entire system, our system dies, we can switch over and utilize the other system. But the ending part of it, the subscribers in the field will need to participate in that also.

So it's kind of like a whole lot of CB operators talking to each other.

Yeah.

Maybe an upgrade to that.

I put it out there, and I'll kind of show them what, you know, the fire department, CMS, law enforcement, I'll show them what it can do, and they're the ones that make the decision to purchase their equipment, because we, 911 can't buy their equipment. They have to procure that themselves.

We can only procure what's really, what's used for us, so.

Mark be coming to physical court and asking to borrow some money. Emergency management can have a talk group where they would do search and rescue operations. They can have a small little talk group and if they have the equipment, they can utilize that and 911 center can monitor all that.

Is this similar to, will this be used in the event of, we'll say the tornadoes in Western Kentucky? Is this a communication group for people that we got deployed there to assist in some capacity? Would they use this?

Within that, within being a part of this system, if you're sent somewhere else, some phone calls can be made and your talk group can be in that area.

This statewide.

So if you're running somewhere else to assist, probably really well for Joey's team. If they're on that state system, they're able to talk to other entities in other counties.

With a big push of More counties switching over to that system.

They are. Quite a few counties that are jumping onto it. Not totality. I think a lot of counties still have their own independent systems, and some counties are doing it totality, where that's really the only system that they'll have. But it can go both ways, however you want to use it. I like it as redundancy.

So I'm not saying that you should go buy everything, but could you work on and figure out maybe different units and how many, maximizing what it would look like and what it would cost.

Yeah, that's what I'm working on now, especially Sheriff's Office SRT was kind of the first thing that came to mind because they were looking at getting that off, they were getting that kind of operation off the main channel because the main channel is currently not encrypted. So in the SRT operations, beyond training, you know, they're deploying somewhere, put them on an encrypted channel, they'll be able to communicate with themselves and then communicate with us. But the first idea I had when it came to that, so I'm looking at, you know, what radio devices that would cost the sheriff's department. So I can come up with what they allow on the system because it's not saying it's proprietary, but there are only certain types of equipment that they'll allow on it. And once I get that, I can get those price points from some vendors, and I can, you know, definitely share that with people.

Are there grants out there that would be available to help?

I believe there are grants, Homeland Security grants. I mean, Joe, we can probably contest that to get in radios. I think we had quite a big one, what, 20 years ago?

About the whole county. Even if it's for backup, though?

Yeah. As long as it goes with the solution that the grant's about. I think back then it was a big digital P25 push.

More multi-agency, multi-county. That's what those grants really help towards. Statewide asset.

Any more discussion?

All right. We didn't have anything else on the agenda unless you have anything that's come up.

The only thing I have is we did September 17th. We didn't have anything else on the agenda, but I did mention last time in the court

that I wanted to discuss how we handle information that we're putting out, whether it be a social media or other news releases. I just think that we need to have, excuse me, just want to have some type of guidelines in place. I'm not sure what guidelines we're using or how we're vetting the information that we're putting out, but obviously, recently we've had a few hiccups where the information might not have been as accurate as it should have been. And while it was a minor incident, I just want to figure out what we did wrong to where if it is a major incident, that we are putting the correct information out there.

Yeah, I think we had two things that basically have laid us some information that came out of Dynamo. So we've had some... meetings in regard to both of those occasions to look at what happened, improve upon those. And I didn't know if, Mike, if you want to just summarize what we came up with on both of those.

Which one to talk about first?

The siren is the one for the tornado. That's the first one.

Tornado siren activation. So yeah, I mean, basically we've got some information in the field and we, dispatchers thought that it was the best interest of the citizens to activate the sirens based on what they were hearing. Moving forward, we'll strictly just go off of what the National Weather Service puts out to activate those sirens. So there are certain systems in the county that activate automatically based off those alerts. So we'll just follow that, we're going to follow that same process. That's correct. Versus getting storm chasers or whoever's looking at the sky thinking that something's out there.

Do we have made it very clear in the future that that's what we'll do?

Do we have any general, to my knowledge, we don't have any general guidelines saying, you know, that we're going to verify the source of information, you know, review it. and talk with the Incident Command or whoever's in charge in that area.

I think that gets to the second point. That's exactly what we decided to do. To make sure that we don't put something out too early that may, at that moment, is accurate information, but it's not coming from the correct sources.

So, you know, basically... Now we're going to let the boots on the ground take care of those notifications and request us to participate if that's what they want.

I don't know if we need some... Maybe an SOP. Yeah, when things break loose, you know, it's hard to remember everything and every step that needs to be

We've got policies.

We do.

And those have been changed or have been changed.

They've been changed. We've met.

And internal policy to 9-1-1, that has a default policy. So we're going to change it.

So those are recent then. They're recent. Yes. Okay. I think that's what Bruce is talking about.

Yeah, in response to the things that you're talking about. know I did I just want to say that I'm going through this process our 9-1-1 folks and anybody else involved in that they weren't really do anything wrong I mean they were trying to do what they thought was right for the citizens of the county you know Brian but but I think through those learn from it in a future we'll go down a different path make sure that it's accurate

don't think anybody thought they were active now

Well, I just want to say, you know, in reading it, and of course, this is all centered around social media, but in reading the comments, most of the comments were positive, you know, better safe than sorry type comments, but it can cause confusion and, of course, alarm, unneeded alarm. So I think, you know, I'm glad to hear that you all have already been working on what's up there and making those changes. in place and I'm sure you work with Brian on that too and moving forward on it.

We're very fluid in making adjustments because it's constant changes so it means kind of norms of public safety.

The world we live in today with social media, I mean, once you put it out there, it's not even half a minute that it's been shared or looked at or, you know, commented on. So it's pretty crucial.

We don't want to be the national inquirer of Hardin County.

Yeah, it's pretty crucial to get it right the first time.

It has impacts on our factories, too. They have to shut down, put their people out, and it costs production. So, I mean, there's a lot of things that could trigger it. What is our procedure now? Say a tornado is coming and who alerts who?

Obviously, the National Weather Service. When that comes into our center, that's the activation of the tornado signs. Again, we're not dependent on ground reports. If it comes in from the National Weather Service, which it will, and the mass notification that we have through the National Weather Service is key there, too. We're going to get notifications three counties before it gets to Harkin County. That plays an important role too. So that is the policy moving forward.

It's a county-wide alert. It isn't regional. We activate it. It's in Radcliffe. Sonora gets it too. Everybody gets it. It's on our office, pretty much how we operate. We don't own the equipment, so they'd have to segregate it based off codes and reprogram things. That's really up to the cities.

Yeah, yeah.

They may come to the county and ask for some.

Anybody have anything else they'd like to discuss?

The volunteer fire department plan.

There's a committee set up to review it, make changes or whatever. Any update on that?

Matt Haddle, he's the chairman of that. He's been really busy apparently, but I sent him a request to try to meet, or the request was to meet before the end of August. That passed by. sent out a request to him to go ahead and set up a meeting, and he's in the process of doing it right now with the ones that were named beyond that group. So we have not met yet, to answer your question, but hopefully we'll meet here soon. The other thing, I'm sorry, the other thing that's a little confusing is that he had the wrong email addresses. three magistrates. I called back and sent that back to him and so that slows things down a little bit too. So that's been corrected since then, right, you guys have done? Yes.

That's what I was going to mention, but he has sent out a recent email where we're in the process and I've responded to it and I know, you know, he's working on a date to meet.

One problem with that is you've got Do we have an update yet on the grant for the storm shelter? Should be sometime soon. Should be sometime. Somebody, one of my constituents asked me, so I'm just verifying. I know we talked about storm shelter, but also we talked about heating. Do you remember, are they capable of being cooling as well? Cooling shelters? I don't think, I think there's a ventilation system.

I don't think there's a system.

Again, Aaron, nothing money can't take care of, though. You want to donate 10 air conditioners, I'm sure.

Mr. Cool.

That's all we have, unless anyone has anything else to discuss. Hearing none, we will adjourn at 4.07. Jenny's got that agreement, right?

It's all been approved. Jenny's reviewing the resolution.

Yeah, the MOU. So we can possibly put that on next agenda.

And I'll email you if she says it's okay and we can get it on 12BK and we'll get it on the next court. It shouldn't be a issue with state police. Pretty good about it.