JOHNSON COUNTY FIRE DISTRICT #1 – Johnson County, Kansas

Board of Directors Meeting

February 8, 2011       6:30 p.m.

Fire Station #2   -  29000 W. 183^rd St  -  Gardner, KS

BOARD MEMBERS           STAFF

Keith Johnson                         Max Sielert                  Kevin Ritter

Kent Harlow                           Rob Kirk

Mark Burdolski

CALL TO ORDER

Mark Burdolski called the meeting to order.

APPROVAL OF MINUTES

Kent Harlow moved to approve the agenda as submitted.  Keith Johnson seconded and the motion carried.

MINUTES

Mark Burdolski presented an error on page 2, the date of 2001 should be 2011.  Keith Johnson moved to approve the minutes from the January 2011 BOARD meeting with corrections.  Kent Harlow seconded and the motion carried.

FINANCIAL REPORT

a. December Financial Report

We had discussed the bond temp note last month and we are now within $726.34 as far as what Junes report shows and what the Accountants report shows.  The accountants originally show us being $42,856.47 over budget.  Our figures were different because the reimbursement for the radios.  Coding errors accounted for some of the difference.  We have $25,946.92 left in the temp note fund.   We are still working on resolving the $726.34 difference between the financial report and our records of expense.  We agreed we were correct on the new bond issue’s first financial report.

Our operating budget reflected an overdraft and loan amount and this will be corrected.  There were a couple other things in Assets that were not accurately posted.  Coding errors will be corrected in the January financial.  We have created our new line items with amounts, and these have been turned over to the accountants.  The new numbers will begin with the January report.

Keith Johnson moved to table the December 2010 Financial Report until the next meeting.  Kent Harlow seconded and the motion carried.

b. January Financial Report

We have not received the January report from our accountants prior to the meeting, this is always a problem getting them completed before our meeting when it falls too early in the month.  However Chief Sielert offered information on activity during the month.

Since January 1st we have received 2 checks from the City of Gardner $87,275 each, 1 from the airport $72,761 and our 1st tax distribution for $608,070 for a total of $855,381 in revenue for 2011. Our expenses for 2001 are $151,649.95 and $61,535.20 for repayment of the 2010 loans from Metcalfe Bank, along with another$213,128.13 for A/P and Payroll for a total of $426,313.28 in expense for 2011. This leaves us $429,067 in revenue

What we have coming in for the next 5 months is estimated to be around $601,861 including the Kimberly Clark delinquent taxes projected to be received.  For this year there should be $36,000 tax and one half of this should be received within the next couple weeks.

With what we have now and what we project to receive between now and the end of June that should give us $1,038,028 to operate on over the next 5 months. I project spending to be approximately $160,000 a month for Payroll and A/P over the next 5 months.  By June we will be in good shape.  Keith Johnson questioned what additional costs would be expected with the addition of the new station.  Chief Sielert advised when budgeting he figured out what 1/3^rd of our operational cost were before consolidation and added that to the budget to account for the addition of the Gardner Station along with adding actual cost for 10 new employee’s.

Our Equipment Reserve will not be moved until after July, since we will not know how much our actual distribution will be until that time.  He suggested keeping the sick and vacation reserve amount the same for now to cover any future retirement costs, but should be reconsidered after July when our actual budget will be apparent.

The January 2011 Financial report will be available at the next meeting.

BUSINESS FROM THE FLOOR

None

OLD BUSINESS

Fire Chief Max Sielert presented:

Once the budget is approved we will republish, but this cannot be done until we are confident the final numbers are known.  Due to the new employees and bond issue the budget must be republished.  We are trying to wrap this up and get this ready to publish.

I talked to Marilyn and she advises that within the next week she will be meeting with the judge and Olathe’s city attorney and work out what is going to happen on our Olathe lawsuit.  We should have a better idea of what the time frame will be after that meeting and get an idea when we could expect a decision.

Chief Sielert indicates that Miami County residents have been calling our office wanting us to provide their fire protection due to our ISO rating.  This would be a savings for them.  He and Rob Kirk met with Miami County’s Administrator this past week.  They learned there are 2 different fire boards and the county administrator to handle these complaints.  In the future we will pass these complaints on to the appropriate Fire Boards for them to deal with it.  The insurance companies are actually auditing the mileage between their customers and the closest fire station.  Most of the residents contacting us are in the Edgerton area.  A 5 mile radius of our Station #4 would take us 3 miles into Miami County as far as 239^th Street and the insurance companies are changing their premiums for those outside this area, since our station does not serve them even though we are the closest station.  We will not participate in this issue, the only thing we can do is pass the complaints on to their fire board and let them determine how to address the issue.

We were contacted by Baldwin City as they are looking at doing a consolidation with Palmyra Township in Douglas County.  They plan to meet with us soon and discuss the issues we had with our consolidation.

In December we did over 200 calls and in January we did 160 calls.  With our new Firehouse software we will be able to provide the board and the City of Gardner with a monthly report of the activity within our district.  The County sends out a monthly report that shows all activity across the county.

Dave Dilner, the City Manager for Edgerton is resigning to take a job in Abilene as City Manager.  Mike Press will be serving as interim City Manager.  He has been consulting the last 6 months and this will be a great move to the City Manager position.

Stewart Fairburn with the City of Gardner is resigning to take a job as City Manager in Oklahoma as of March 7^th.  Dave Drovetta will be doing the search for a replacement for this position, but will wait until after April when the new Council is in place.

At our last meeting we talked about getting calls from the city about having a class 5 ISO rating because all of the City is within 5 miles of 1 of our Stations.  Chief Sielert is going to send a letter to get confirmation from ISO; however, he is concerned about the fact that this could cause a re-evaluation.

After some of our staff supported the control burn in Wyandotte County last Fall, we were contacted by Johnson County Parks & Rec.  They met with Chief Morley and are extremely interested in our department doing control burns for Johnson County.  The Red Card certifications have been a very good thing in that they have opened up more funding opportunities.  The Federal Red Card certification is required in order to receive funding for the control burns.

Deputy Chief Rob Kirk presented:

Chief Kirk advises the Grant approved last month is completed and in the mail.  Safer Grant has not advised any news as yet either way.  They notified us they were in a holding pattern, but did expect everyone who applied to receive the grant money they requested.

Firehouse is almost completed and ready to go.  There are still some reports needing to be entered before it will be done.

We have been asked to provide support at Safety City being held during the Home Show at Bartle Hall.  They have asked us to provide the inflatable Kenny Firefighter, which the Kiwanis Club bought for us last year.

The Balloon Festival is projected to be a very large event this year due to some large sponsors.  This will be a four day show held at Celebration Park during Memorial Day weekend.  This will be a manpower intensive project.  Even if there are profits from this event, we will not make enough to pay for our resources we provide at the event.  Festival of the Trails is the next weekend.   Kent Harlow questioned whether we need to plan for overtime during these events.  Chief Kirk indicated that during this time we are going to try to use volunteer staff and only one company to cover each event.

Chief Kirk indicated our board members need to be certified in the FEMA NIMS training in order to be qualified for federal grants.  He was not sure what courses were required, but will check and advise.

The Gardner city fire inspections are still in progress.  We had meetings this past week and expect to resolve some of our issues in the next couple months.  Right now we are still working on the consolidation issues.  Keith Johnson asked about part of the process, Chief Kirk explained that if building here in the City of Gardner, we will get the plans in order to address fire safety issues.  The City does the codes and final inspections.  Once the building is open it becomes our responsibility to approve any fire inspections.

We are now the largest of the 3 fire district in both square miles and population in the county since our consolidation.

NEW BUSINESS

a. Approve 2011 line item budget

On the first page the 2009, 2010 and the new 2011 revenue estimates are shown.   The real and personal property tax is higher because we inserted the Kimberly Clark increase and the delinquent tax is higher again due to Kimberly Clark.  The other revenue estimates are numbers we received from the County.   Our Estimated Revenue for 2011 is $2,659,936.  The mil levy is the same.  Grants were not included so we can look at just our operating budget.  Total operating budget is $2,449,537.

Keith Johnson noticed Dental as a new line item.  Chief Sielert indicated that the line item Dental is new, so we can see what our new costs will be with the 10 additional employees.  At the very end the total expenditures for 2011 is $2,449,537.   When you refer to our total operating budget that was in the proposal for consolidations, we are under budget by about $18,000, which is a very comfortable amount for what we will come out with at the end of 2011.

One issue is our thermal imaging cameras that came from two of our units.  These were very old and failing and need to be replaced.  Estimated cost is about $30,000.  Kent Harlow questioned if we shouldn’t plan for replacement of high dollar equipment by putting them on a rotation scheduled replacement.  Chief Kirk indicated that this would be a good idea, since we just purchased new SCBA which will eventually need to be replaced.  Equipment wise, everything is paid for through the bond issue.  The only debt payment we have is the bond payment.  The next two years we will have a decreased payment and a full payment will be due until 2015.

Keith Johnson questioned not showing a Debt payment line.  Chief Sielert indicated we do not have any debt payments for 2011.

Keith Johnson moved to Table the Budget until next meeting.  Kent Harlow seconded and the motion carried.

FUTURE MEETINGS

The next board meeting will be held on the 3rd Tuesday, March 15^th, and will begin at 6:30 p.m. to be held at Station 4 in Edgerton.

ADJOURNMENT

At 7:45 p.m. Keith Johnson moved to adjourn the meeting and continue with executive session.  Kent Harlow seconded and the motion carried.  There was a 15 minute Executive Session convened.