Township Board - Regular Meeting

Call the meeting to order.

Sure. Yeah. I pledge 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. We will do the roll call. Schmelzer is here. Bradford is here. Cindy Wang-Beckler is here. A quorum is present. The purpose of this special meeting is to consider an offer to purchase the 2012 International ALEXIS 4x4 Rescue Pumper and to hear an update presentation on the proposed fire authority. Let's begin with the purchase offer. We have a purchase offer of $130,000 for the 2012 International ALEXIS 4x4 Rescue Pumper. Was that brokered through

The same place. Same. I believe so, yes. I'll make a motion. We accept the offer for the pumper of $130,000 sold as is.

Second. We're going to have a motion and a second. Is there any additional discussion?

The only question I'll ask is, I'm assuming all the equipment we talked about before has already been removed. That is correct. I assume so. I just want to make sure.

Yep. All right. Seeing there's no discussion, let's have a vote, please. Mr. Bradford? Yes. Ms. Wainbeckler? Yes. Ms. Smeltzer votes aye. Motion carries. All right. Now, item two of the special meeting is a presentation on the proposed fire authority and we have Chief Tom Herndon here.

The floor is yours. Sounds more like a fireside conversation.

Okay. Well, cozy. Do we have anybody online?

No.

Okay.

Okay. Well, at least it's recorded.

Yeah. So an update on the fire authority is we've named this the Manistee Regional Fire Initiative. All right. And this initiative was to create a fire authority with Onekama Township, Manistee Township, the City of Manistee, Filer Township, and Stronach Township. And really just a quick recap of how we came to this initiative. is Chief Johnson and I have been talking for a few different years about some of the struggles that we've been having in the fire service in general. And what we've researched and come to the conclusion is nationally, statewide, and locally, volunteer fire departments have seen their membership dwindle by over a third, and our call volume has increased by over a third. And we've determined that this isn't a sustainable type of thing that we can deal with over the course of time. If our call volume keeps increasing and the amount of available responders keeps decreasing, we're going to have to do something different. It's just not a sustainable path. And basically what we've done is we've come to the conclusion that if we start working together, get multiple different organizations and governments and the agencies working together to reduce some of the capital expenses that we have, that we can reinvest that money into purchasing personnel, adding staff. So we have staff available to respond to these emergencies. With that, we've come to this regional authority type model. With that, we went to all of the different township boards, Onekma, the township, Filer, the city, and Stronach all unanimously passed a letter of support. And that letter of support put two members from each agency into a steering committee to where we can create this initiative and this authority. We've been working on that. The steering committee has been meeting, I would say, about bi-monthly for, say, about the past six months. And right now we've got to the point where we have released a press release and we're getting ready to release a website that has information for the public to get information on this. With that, Mr. Bradford's been working with us and created the budget. We've presented this budget to the steering committee and to give the public an idea on what it would cost and how it would work. Would you like to do any budget info from there? I think that's when we talk about this. This authority is putting more firefighters in each station full-time, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. With that, that does increase the local fire department budgets. That's what we're assuming. What most of The citizens want to know is what this is going to cost. So here's our budget that we've been working on.

So anyway, this was the culmination of

I don't know, months of discussion and information gathering and learning, frankly, and getting information from the different townships to try to put something together for kind of what it might look like for an authority. So this is like a 20-page document, and I'll just kind of run through it. you know tom already kind of did the introduction talked a little bit about the current state and kind of how we got to where we are that's all mentioned in the budget here um but then when we actually get to uh some of the nuts and bolts this document also addresses that then it gets into the numbers one thing tom didn't mention is there's going to be a website that the consultant's putting together mrfi.info or something um There's going to be a mailer in the tax bills that go out. They're finalizing that. And there'll be a whole list of frequently asked questions that will be on that website when it launches. So we're finalizing that. And that will just kind of be the place where people can go and get the best information. That budget document will be on there. I think the ballot language will be on there, that sort of thing. So, you know, the legal framework is the Public Act 57 of 1988, which is the Emergency Services to Municipalities Act. Although this authority will not have an independent taxing power. I think that's important to know. The governance still has to be worked out, but it's likely to be an at-large member or representative from each of the participating communities and an at-large member with substantial fire and EMS management. And then they'll obviously have to hire a professional fire chief to oversee the day-to-day management of it. We have an implementation draft schedule here, which is pretty important. So the press release was already out. The taxes are going to be to the county not by today, but soon. Murphy website would be launched on June 12th. Then you have the ballot language prepared for townships late in June or sometime in June. Ballot language hopefully is approved by the township board in July. And also in July, there'd be public informational meetings. Articles of incorporation would be recommended by the steering committee and presented at board meetings for discussion. August 11th is the deadline for the ballot. There'd be another public informational meeting in September. And then obviously we have election day in December. depending on how the elections go, the articles of incorporation would be approved by the boards of each town show. Just kind of taking a look at what the draft revenue for the authority would be when it's fully in operation, it's just under $4 million. About 70% of that is contributions from the local governments, 17% is charge for services or transport fees, And then we have $538,000 for contract services, and then just a miscellaneous $10,000 for other. The way we settled on the funding formula, after a lot of research, is a three-part formula, which is very commonly used. It blends the ability to pay for each community, the value of the property, protect their readiness costs, and your governance stake and actual system usage. It's very defensible and recognized as durable and defensible. So 70% on property values, 15% is a fixed allocation, and then 15% based on cost for service. After you make that calculation, then you adjust that by a capital equalization factor, which gives the communities credit for the value of the equipment that they're bringing into the authorities. And then that credit or debit is amortized over 15 years and adjusts their annual contribution. And then it's also adjusted down proportionally by the amount of the contracted services. So with that, you've got... It's a little bit bigger. So on the proposed budget, the column that is really kind of important is the final contribution column. So you can see from each of the communities, we've got City of Manistee at $870,000, Manistee Township at $590,000, Filer at $490,000, Renekoma Township at $553,000, Stronic Township at $250,000, and then Contracted Services, which is the tribe, is $538,000. So the total community revenue is estimated at $3.3 million total. And this is the equivalent millage rate based on the latest taxable values that I have. So, for example, for Onekama, if we wanted to raise that money on a millage, it would be 2.3 mills. So about 1.3, 1.4 of what we're levying now. For Stronic, because they have a much lower taxable value, it would be a lot bigger millage rate. That just gives you an idea of what those are. Then we talk a little bit about charge for service, which is the amount that they get for transports, for advanced life support. This is based on actual numbers from the city of Manistee, based on what our run breakdown is and kind of what we have for call. It's actually fairly conservative, but we were estimating when we're fully up and running about $663,000. And then there's data here that shows kind of the three-year average of run. We assume 80% of the runs are going to be billable. Talked about contract services. The other cost component is going to be like cost recovery and grants and that sort of thing. We didn't include any grants in the budget, no local revenue sharing board grants, no state or federal grants. We do think that federal safer grants might be available, and most places don't want to commit to those because it requires you to keep an employee on. You have to commit to having them. Well, as a new organization, that's not a problem. It's more of a problem for established fire departments. So hopefully, you know, if we can do that, that'll just make the numbers look better. And then there's a section here on staffing. Total staff is considered to be 43 and a half 15 of those would still be paid on call. So it's really 28 and a half of full-time employees. We've got 24 firefighters, half of which are paramedics, half of which are EMTs, a fire marshal, a full-time clerical, a half-time assistant chief, a full-time deputy operations chief, and a fire chief. And this might vary. This is kind of like the optimal. It really depends on once the district gets, or the authority gets formed, what the board decides and works that out. This is going to allow four fire stations to be manned 24-7, at least to begin with. That may not be optimal in the long run, but that's kind of where it's at right now. And I think as things, if this happens, as it shakes out, that could change. You know, really, it's kind of, will be a learning process and evolutionary as we go along. With four stations, this is the minimum staffing necessary, really, to make that work. But hopefully we'll be able to backfill if we need to with some of the on-call folks and have a little more flexibility in the contractors, all of them that we approved with labor. We are assuming that this is going to be a union shop, which is undoubtedly going to happen. It's going to be a little bit of a challenge for most townships because they don't They don't have many employees, much less a lot of employees with a union contract to deal with. So that's going to, the authority's going to have to have a really good labor attorney, I think, is the bottom line on that, especially to navigate through the initial contract and what have you. This is kind of the projected organizational chart, kind of mimics the table that we had on the previous page. So we kind of go into some details about the wages and benefits. Because of the way the statute's written, the existing City of Manistee firefighters, they want to continue to work, will come over automatically. And their contract is basically in place for up to six months until you're negotiating a new labor agreement. There's some navigation here. Again, we're going to need a good labor attorney to navigate the processes that are laid out in the statute, but it's not like it hasn't been done. We're assuming that the management positions and clerical positions would be non-union. You can see the wages and benefits budget shows about 70% wages, 30% fringes, which is fairly typical. So we're going to talk a little bit. So the wage benefit or the wage assumptions are that the hourly wages are competitive based on your job title and responsibility, includes overtime, reasonable amount, including PA-604 overtime. We're hoping that overtime should be a little bit easier to manage than maybe in a single department, just because you've got the ability to shuffle people around and backfill some paid on-call staff. Social Security and Medicare, this assumes that for legacy employees, which are the ones that come over from the city's full-time workforce, do not participate in Social Security. That's currently the case, but all the new employees would. And the reason the new employees would is because they would not be in a qualified pension plan. Again, the labor attorney is going to have to sort through some of that, but that's pretty much how it's going to work. In health insurance, we're assuming that The plan will be similar to what the legacy employees currently have with authority funding 80% and the employees paying 20% via high deductible health savings account plan design. And it would be opt-out available for eligible employees that have acceptable coverage through a spouse or another source. Talk about other insurance, including vision, dental, life insurance, similar to what the current City of Manistee employees have. Those are going to be paid 100% by the authority. The budget on retirement is a little bit complicated because we have a merged defined benefit pension plan with the city. This budget's assuming that the new employees would have a defined contribution plan with the minimum required and civic contribution and maybe some dollar to dollar net from selling you off up to 10%. The legacy employees that are retired would be fully the city of Kansas City's responsibility including the proportional assets and liabilities. This also assumes that the authority would be responsible for the legacy employees that are still on the MERS plan. MAFA would adopt the MERS plan, which would be closed to any new hires at inception. The city would transfer proportional assets and liabilities to the authority as determined by MERS. I had long discussions with MERS on that. That's the best way to do it and the fairest way to do that. So We would have to get an actuarial evaluation and there'd be a lot of paperwork, but that's likely how that would happen. That's what the budget assumes. Assumes that there's a uniform expense, food allowance. New employees do not have an education benefit like the legacy employees do. And then there is a post-employment benefit for legacy employees that the city would still maintain responsibility for rather than throwing that onto the authority. It's not really insurance. It's just a statement to help cover retirement insurance. So with that all said, it's important to note that any of this and all of this is going to be subject to collective bargaining. And that initial contract is really going to set the table for what the cost structure is. So that's going to be super important once the authority gets to that point. But this table here just breaks it down by administrative folks, the paramedic firefighters, the EMT firefighters, and the paid on call. And you can see that the total is about $2.9 million for wages, which is the biggest chunk of it, obviously. Let me get into operations. I had the benefit of knowing one equity's budget, probably, and city's budget. didn't have as good of information for Manisee Township and Biola Township and Swanwick Township just because of the way they keep their books and they don't have direct access to it. So we try to do the best we can to blend in an operating budget, and I try to simplify it. There are some intangibles in here, but it's about 550,000 is kind of what we landed on. A couple of the bigger items which will definitely eventually have some fluctuation is the insurance. When you bid that out, I think we can get that number down. And also, you know, we're going to have to work through some of the utilities and stuff that these shared facilities, but we feel like this is a pretty good workable budget to begin with. This budget assumes that there will be an operational phase in. Revenue will be 90% in year one, 95% in year two, and 100% in year three. Personnel, we just threw it in a 50, 75, and 100 because it's hard to hire folks in this industry. It's going to take some time. In operations, I put it in at 80, 90, and 100. You can argue those should be different. They can be tweaked, but that's what we kind of use for placeholder. So what this does is you have your revenue numbers, you have your personal cost operating costs. The leftover, because we're going to still be getting the bulk of the revenue from the millages, is going to go towards the equipment fund. So the first two years of the equipment fund are really front-loading. And that's really a key to making this whole thing work because based on these numbers, the equipment fund self-funds itself. which is really helpful for everybody. So on the capital expenses, this budget assumes that each community has to upgrade their fire station to accommodate folks, and that's not an authority expense, at least in the beginning. There's going to have to be an agreement between the communities and the authority on how to lease the fire station to the authority. It won't be a dollar lease, but it will spell out rights, obligations, responsibilities. The equipment itself, that will actually get transferred to the authority. The authority will have to take title of that. Again, that will be worked through either in the articles of incorporation and or agreements once the authority is up and running. Right now, the authority has approximately 22 pieces of major equipment with replacement costs of about $9.5 million. That excludes the hovercraft. Minor equipment, SCBA, cardiac monitor, safety equipment, nozzles, pipe, whatever will be transferred in. And over time, more of a comprehensive replacement plan will be crafted for that year. But right now, there's a $50,000 a year placeholder for that type of minor equipment. And also keep in mind that the Revenue and Sharing Board tends to help fund a lot of that stuff. So let me look at this capital equalization. I told you that we needed to give the communities credit for the amount of equipment that they're bringing into the fund. So this, we have a spreadsheet as a table with everything, with all the equipment, what its age is and values and whether it's going to be kept or sold or what have you. And it's all distilled into this. So basically, each of the communities bringing in a certain amount of equipment value. And then there's redundant equipment value. which is going to assume that the authority would sell that, not the community. And then the total of 3.85 million of equipment that's being brought in. This is the budget share. So if you apply that to the capital, then this is the expected share of assets that each community would bring in. So for example, in Acoma, we'd only be expected to bring in $720,000 of equipment based on our share, but we're bringing in 1.67 million. So we'd get a credit of 956,000 and that's amortized over an expected lifespan of 15 years. So every year, our contribution for the first 15 years is reduced by $63,000 compared to what it would be just based on the funding formula. Manistee Township has some higher value equipment, but you can see the city and filer really don't have all that new or all that valuable equipment. So there's a negative amount, which means they're paying more. And then LRBOI, we added this in our factor as well. So that's how that gets equalized. Oh, well, that's wrong, Tom. It says water and sewer rates. We've got to fix that before that goes out. So the capital plan, when I budget it out, it shows that there's enough funds for a minimum of 10 years, and there's sufficient funds available. And that includes some upfront purchases in the first couple of years of a ladder truck and an ambulance, which are kind of high-ticket items. Some of those are going to be purchased outright in cash. Some of them are going to be financed over time based on, you know, kind of the budget. But at the end of the day, that funding formula that we looked at back here makes... Go back here. This makes... You know, the whole plan basically worked, including the capital. And I think that's huge. You've got people that, you know, we just bought a pumper for $900,000, right? So we kind of have our own internal capital plan. Most of the communities don't. Like the city, for those two big pieces of equipment, the ladder truck and potentially the new pumper, those probably have been a bond issue. Really? About it, yeah. And they're just two, it's $2.2 million for a pumper truck. Maybe a little bit different, we've got 80 pieces of equipment that we have to pump to our motor floor. Townships don't have that. But that's kind of how the budget's laid out. We've had everybody in the steering committee has looked at it. Troy, the consultant from Indiana has looked at it. Tom's been through it. And everybody feels like it's, you know, for a proposed starting budget, it's a good place to be at. Obviously, I have to tweak that a little bit with the headers, but that's kind of where that is. That's going to be information the public's going to need to see to kind of get behind this if that's something they want to support or not.

I got asked today just something I don't know how to answer, even after all this, but what do we plan for going ahead for just not only inflation, but just do we put a multiplier on every year? For the equipment? No, not for equipment. For everything, operations.

Yeah, I mean, you're going to have to. I think I built in some of that, but yeah. I mean, it's probably wages and benefits are probably 5% is a fair amount. And, you know, you can keep your operational costs at 3% and then capital. I think capital spiked up. I think it's kind of plateauing, but you have to build that in as well. And then, of course, you've got to build on it. I haven't done 10-year financial projections with the operations, but I did do it. I did. 20-year projection on the equipment just to see. It definitely worked for the first 10 years. And really for the rest of it, it pretty much worked out. But that's too far off to really project anything with any degree of certainty. But for 10 years, yeah, so. But there's a lot of assumptions in here. And so the purpose of this document is not to say this is a perfect budget. It was to lay out the assumptions that are in it so that people can say, yeah, this is a sniff test, basically, which it is no more.

You do the millage for how many years? Five? I think we're going to do five to begin with. Okay, so do you... You're going to build in the cost multiplier every year. Do you then raise the millage at the end of five? I mean, you may have to raise the millage, I'm assuming.

So we need to look at the wording of that ballot language, and that has to be, I think, a discussion, because like the city's equivalent millage rate is 2.1 I don't know if the, you know, if the community should build in, like, make this 2.5, make this 3, make this 3.5, make this 3.5 to give you some headroom. Because every year the, you know, and hopefully taxable value growth at a flat millage, let's assume it's not rolled back by Hedley, which we know has been happening. We'll make it enough so that you can continue to fund this. But, you know, Every year, the board of the authority is going to look at their budget, and they're going to send basically a request or a bill to the communities for their portion.

So if you're really just- So the millage may not cover that, is what I'm saying.

So then you'd have to supplement it with the general bond. Correct. But remember, everybody from each of the communities is going to have a seat at that table and decide that. So that's why it's self-policing. But that's, yeah, I mean, that's the question I think that one that we need to get answered is what, you know, I'm not going to put 2.37% probably put 2.5 just to be safe or something. We have to find out what that's going to look like and make sure that's in the wording so we know. But maybe a board says, no, we're just going to put this on and we're going to hope the taxable value growth covers us.

And then the grants and all the other different variables that you remember.

We don't have any grants that we've ever done. There's a lot of, like I say, make a lot of different assumptions.

And I'm assuming we would still ask for money from the tribe every year for the public. I mean, right. The other grants, yes, absolutely.

Yeah, I mean, there's no reason. If you add up what Manistee Township, Filer Township, Onekama Township, City of Manistee, and Stronton Township have gotten, there's no reason that the authority shouldn't get the same proportional amount. It might even get more at that point, you know, over time. I think that's reasonable.

There's not that much of each year, no. And then there would be more ability to share the stuff. So the whole concept of this is to have less stuff that we need to have less purchases. So that's one of the things we're going for.

So as I recall from seeing the budget and seeing today, the amounts that are due are based on that formula, that weighted formula. And it's really going to be up to the township, the city, to decide if they're going to do it millage-wise or whatever. But the number is based on the expenses and all of that. So what my question is, throughout you were saying, well, this is conservative. We haven't considered grants. It could be less, you know, all of this. So what happens legally, I guess, for a township if there's a millage voted in, And because of being very fortunate in getting grants or whatever else, the numbers are significantly lower.

So you don't have to levy the full amount of the millage.

Okay.

So you can adjust that each year depending on what. Okay.

And you're going to be like the maximum we can do. You can't go off. Right. You can always go down.

I mean, and we're going to have an issue if this happens because, you know, each community, I think, I think Stronach has a voted fire millage, right? But Manistee Township doesn't? No. Biler doesn't, is that right? Biler does not.

I believe Stronach has some, yes.

So we might have some carrying in that first year. Right. And we'll have to decide, are we going to leave that and, like, are we still going to have a fire fund and kind of, and we probably will because we're loving this millage, it's just going to be an in and out, but, you know, we can have somewhat of a reserve there to help buffer So let's say something breaks. So we have the ability to do that. But that's a good point. We don't have to levy the balance.

And I didn't study the ballot. So the way the ballot language would be, it would be up to whatever numbers are there. And then the next question I have, and it's I guess one that's got to be asked. Since I don't know what the agreement is and all that type of thing, Is there like what I call an exit strategy or whatever developed either for individual or just, I mean, once you're in, you know what I'm trying to say?

Yeah, so in the articles of incorporation, right here, so in July, you'll have some draft articles of incorporation that cover all that stuff. They're being worked on right now. And I haven't honestly looked at it. We've got several examples. The attorney did up kind of a draft. Tom modified it a little bit, but we're working through all that. And I think the steering committee obviously is going to get that early. There's a lot going on behind the scenes. They're going to have to look at that and feel comfortable with that before they can recommend that agreement to each of the boards. So that's one of the things that we've got to get on and get that.

Because we talked about you want to get out, and then what do you do? We give our equipment. Let's just say, for whatever reason, they decide, okay, we want to get out, and it's year six, or whatever. But the people said, well, they didn't renew it.

Normally, the divorce clause in these agreements is pretty difficult, because you don't want people to jump in. But there needs to be an out clause.

Could you just have something, because in the beginning, you have to commit to so many years, like a three-year commitment, and then after that, there's going to be five.

I think five. Five, okay, yeah. I mean, there was talk about doing it for 10, but nobody was comfortable with that because it's brand new.

You have to commit five, and then after that, things are sour.

And then all these, like the attorney and all that, that's being funded by that initial amount that we all kind of contribute.

So that initial amount is really being funded by, is funding the consultant. The city's really eating the attorney costs up for the most part. basically. And you know, the mailer, it can't be in color. I just got the cost. It's like 11,000 copies. It's like, it would be about a page. For color? Yeah. Oh, yeah. It's like $1,500 for black and white or gray scale. It's going to have to be gray scale. Nobody's spent it on it. Can we just copy it? We can't because they want them, it messes up the machine at the counter. Anyway, we'll sell it. So, that's not built in. So, I don't know if we're going to have each community just pay that, can they normally pay that? Whatever. At this point, we just need to keep moving it ahead and get it to where it has to be.

So, when we talk about staffing issues, not staffing, we're going to have a hard time hiring everyone the first year, second year, third year. What happens to staffing? I got to ask that. I did not answer that question either. So, let's just say you only have 25% of your people the first year hired. where will they be? There'll be less hours at each station, right? I mean, that's the only way to accommodate that, I would assume, correct?

Yeah, and I think that's one of the things we got to keep talking about in a steering committee is, okay, what's our, what's our banding work? You know, how do we expand? Where do we start to grow at? And that's, those, yeah, those are discussions that need to happen. And we got to set some goals and then just make sure everybody understands, hey, these are our benchmarks. This is what we're trying to do. You know, we're trying to get six this year, six the next year, six the following year, Matt, and lay it out there. And then that's where I'm going to be on the hot seat to get it done is what it is.

One, something is not happening.

Different time and doesn't. That's correct. The way it is.

Shut up. How many legacy employees do you think will port over to the authority? Six. Probably seven, maybe.

I'd be number seven.

Okay. But all the stuff about the past and the third, that's all going to be figured out anyways differently, right? The retirement stuff.

So the way the budget proposes, this is what hers recommended after several conversations, is all of the retiree costs is the city's responsibility. the six legacy employees that are going to come over will become the fire authority's responsibility. But we're going to bring over the assets and liabilities related to them. We're going to transfer it to the authority. So you'll be assuming just, okay, you'll be assuming some assets for them? Well, let's say the whole fire department is 80% funded or 70% funded. So if it's $5 million of assets and $8 million of liabilities for the retirees, that stays with the city. If it's a million dollars of assets and 1.2 million in liabilities for the six, those come over to the authority and the authority assumes those payments moving forward. That's the way that MERS has seen it done before and it's really the only way because the authority is benefiting greatly from all those experienced employees on day one coming in and we don't even have full-time firefighters so We went round and round on how to do that best, and that seemed to be the fairest way.

Are there people out there? I mean, is this like a... I'm trying to find a special ed teacher right now. Is that hard to do? Why? Really? Oh. Okay. Because nobody went to do... Substitute one day in a special ed class. Oh, I see. And you'll ask me never to do it again. Okay. But I'm saying that you just don't find them anywhere.

I don't know, like EMTs and stuff. Are they around? You know, it does seem, right now I currently, I have a position open in my car department. I put it out a week ago. I have four applications in it. So I was pretty encouraged with what I got going on right now. We found you get a special ed teacher.

We had an open slot for two years. But what we talked about is, you know, you offer this up and there's these positions. Now all of a sudden, it's up here. It's not in, I don't care, pick a different community, whatever, big community. Maybe you don't want to be down there. Maybe you're sorry. It'd be nice to be up here fishing by Matt's place, getting free sand from behind your house. All the benefits. All the benefits of living down there. Except for the sand. That's what brought me. Yeah, except for the sand. Except for the sand. Okay. Yeah.

But, you know, I think things are looking up. There's a new thing on your, like as you're saying, I'm going to be a Nazi to get this done. But it is something I'm nervous.

You know, I want to make sure I'm on it.

Well, at least you have some applicants. Yeah, I think what the hard part now is it's the paramedics. And that's when I mentioned the experience that they're bringing in is we're bringing six paramedics right off the bat, which that's a pretty good job. on really any organization, right?

Six plus one.

So, yeah.

I'm not going to get Caitlin.

Yeah, she'd be one of them. Yeah. We'll see. We'll see. It's a big thing. Yeah. I just, you know, like, I think it's, I think the community here would look favorable, and I'm not sure about You know, the city, it's not, there's nothing going on in the battle. We're just funding like we do normally. So the question is Manistee and Tyler Township, I think, what are they going to do? And Stronach.

Stronach's the highest for millage, right? Yeah. When I do look at the funding formula and individual communities' contributions, and that's where I get excited when I look at it. By all working together, they're really quite low considering what you would get at your fire department. You know, when we're thinking about putting two firefighters in this building 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and what that would cost individually, with addition to the capital funding that you would need, I feel good showing the different communities the value.

What are we now, one mil? Or are we going to be two and a half? So it's a mil and a half farm. I mean, you don't know what you want to spend your money on, but that to me is a good investment compared to some of the other things we go for.

Yeah, and I think when you have 80% is personnel costs, well, you're not increasing by 80%. You know, it's a good deal.

And it addresses the issue of all your runs being for medical stuff rather than

players.

I think we're, yeah, we're setting it up to respond to the calls that we're getting. Well, I don't even know. Are we 10% fire or not even as a whole? I think it's like 10 to 20 is fire or other relatable accidents, whatever.

I think nationally they'll say 70% is EMS. On a national, I don't know if our department runs closer to 80%.

I think we probably do too because I count everything. Something to me is like common sense. You're the population managing economy is aging yeah so subtract two wildfires in the swamp we're back we're up to 90. and it probably would be yeah probably higher yeah well everybody was here for it and those are cattail cremations something about cattails in this town okay so that's where that's at um i think the next the

From the steering committee standpoint, they're going to continue meeting, but the consultant's got to get the flyer done. We've got to get that to the printer. We've got to work on the frequently asked questions, which Tom has done a lot of work on. We're just kind of fleshing them out. And then also the agreement, the incorporation and the other related agreements have to kind of get drafted up. So there'll be a lot to do, a lot to digest, but hopefully Hopefully, I mean, I hope the public asks a lot of questions because it's a big deal. I mean, I don't think the county's ever been this close to having something like this. You know, it's been tried before and kind of fell on deaf ears, but I think the need is going to go down, so people are seeing that.

We still need to figure out a way to at least, and I don't know how to do it, Tom, with Bear Lake and over here because they're going to want to cover it themselves, I think. We haven't gotten that far yet.

So, We're also, this is a little bit further down, not as high a priority, but also we're working on a more model where the mutual aid agreements won't be for free now. They're going to be billed out at a cost. And I think when you see those numbers, they're going to be like, gulp, maybe we should join the authority.

So yeah, we're currently working on that right now. We've kind of started I do some stuff. I look at it.

Well, we have to do it. We have to do it. And I already mentioned it to Jeff, and he understands. It would be nice somehow if you could offer those. I don't know if you can do this because it's in Bear Lake Township. If you could offer those people our coverage because we are closer and offer them to vote, they might accept it. But I don't know how to do it.

The only way that you can do that, because the steering committee talked about that, would be to have a district, I keep saying district, an authority-wide vote And that is problematic because the city of Manistee has much more population. So it doesn't, it's much better, I think, to do it in each community. Otherwise, you know, you could add Stronach, Onekama, you know, Filer together, and we wouldn't equal Manistee, the city.

And they can make the argument with them that, look, we've covered this for, I think, forever, as far as I know.

They've been getting a good deal, you know.

You think? I mean, it's in our primary coverage area.

And if this whole thing goes south, I can pretty much tell you the city of Manistee is going to do the same thing. Those automatic mutual aid at no cost, that's not sustainable. Right. No way. And there's going to be costs. Well, if you have that cost, you should bill accordingly. I agree. So, I mean, if Bear Lake wants to go it on their own, more power to them. But I think once they see this, I think they're going to want to get in. You know, how that works, I don't know what that looks like. The articles will have to have, articles on corporations will have to have some kind of a section to deal with that, you know. But that's a few steps ahead of the game right now. So we're still sorting that.

And I think once we lay the groundwork and show the services that we can provide at the cost we're doing it, it will be a model others will want.

Well, if we had this and they didn't, and we responded, And even if they joined and didn't have anyone there, we would still respond faster than they probably would, getting to their own people.

Well, if they join, I mean, then the question becomes, do you have a fifth station? I don't know that you do.

I think you probably... Those are all things that... Those are all things that's got to be... Staff it out of this station. Or go up to the Rural Commission and rent one of their buildings from them.

So I'd be looking at the maps, doing the different response time models. throwing that at the board and seeing what the board's appetite is.

At that point, Pleasanton would have to because Pleasanton has been covered by Bear Lake now for 38 grand.

The issue is, depending on who's in and who's out, if you just built a new system from scratch, the stations wouldn't be where they're at right now. That's the problem.

Migrating, getting that catch up to the new way we're doing it is going to be a whole other project. Station locations.

And then you also have, you know, MMR, what's their... What's their... Yeah, where are they at right now? They're still arguing.

They're getting on question.

And that we... MMR has talked to us about our plan and that with what's going on. And then we are... We have another meeting another week from now describing what there is. But essentially, this plan that we are doing, that we're proposing is we are taking a lot of 911 calls away from MMR. So that definitely, I mean, we're doing a lot of transports and that, which would take away from them. And that, however, you know, it's those EMS calls is what's funding our system too. And by us doing that as we're able to provide fire protection and EMS protection And that's, we're a dual role agency. So that's how we're, that's how we're keeping firefighters.

Right now, do you guys transport, or does MMR do all transport? In the city? Yeah. We transport. At the same level that MMR does.

Okay. Advanced life support. Okay. That's what you need the paramedics for, right?

At no out-of-pocket cost. They're the residents. So that's, those are the services that we're talking about. You guys do, but MMR would be a cost of performance. Correct. They bill like any hospital would bill. So those are another one of the value things that we want to be able to explain to the citizens is we're not going to charge out-of-pocket costs for our EMS service, which certainly has MMR's attention too.

Right. And to clarify, insurance gets the bill. You accept what the insurance will pay. Right. Correct. You don't bill the person. Right.

Right. We... We send out an ambulance bill. What the insurance does not cover, we write off. So everyone gets the same bill, but we write off what insurance doesn't cover.

Because MMR, they don't do that. No. They send out a bill. Yeah, I got one.

They don't forgive anything, do they? We didn't ask for the ambulance, but whatever. That's what it is. Once it happens, you really can't say anything. Once it's done and you're up in Traverse City, it works. No, they wouldn't yet. I can't remember what our share was. It was $900 or $1,100 or something. Okay. That's the plan. What is our next meeting for this in

I want to say the 12th.

I didn't bring my phone in with me. I'm a little blind.

I can't believe I didn't bring my phone. It feels weird.

Meeting on Fridays?

It's the 12th of Friday. It's the 11th. June 11th at 10 o'clock.

Oh, the 12th is when the website's supposed to go live. Go live, right.

Absolutely. The 11th at 10, right?

Yes. Yeah, that's the 12th. That'll be exciting, though, on our website.

We get our survey out there. We still have that other gentleman. He's still, whatever those memes were, I still couldn't quite figure that all out. Videos. Videos. Videos. Yeah.

There'll be more of that before... Oh, I'm sure there'll be more before this one. This unbiased guy?

Well, you could say that about either. You could say that if you're for this, you could be biased. It doesn't mean you're for something. It doesn't mean you're biased. I read that one report. It says it was unbiased reporters. And we've got

to be careful as a board because we can't advocate. We can just provide factual information. Whereas other folks out there can say whatever they want.

Yeah, you've got to be real careful with that. Let's present the facts. Okay. Thank you, sir, for coming home. Thank you. It was all mine. Did you guys act on this? Yes. Okay. Thank you. The authority didn't want to buy this thing. Yeah. Okay. Anything else about less fire drugs? I know no one can. No?

There can't be anything else unless board comments.

No, board comments? Did I borrow your pens, young lady? You're getting signed. Then it breaks up. Oh, I'm not supposed to sign this anyways. Yeah. i'm just good thing i look first there you go thank you i guess i'll adjourn fantastic okay