The Fire/EMS taskforce met with West Liberty City Council Tuesday, June 6, to discuss the updates made to the proposed 28E agreement at the West Liberty Community Center.
The room was filled with volunteer firefighters and EMS crewmembers, rural township trustees, all of city councilmembers, city staff and the city’s lawyer Steven Haverkamp.
Councilmember Dana Dominguez said hopefully the information they presented that evening would clarify what the new 28E agency agreement would look like if approved. Members from the volunteer fire department approved paying up to $7,800 for a consultant to review the 28E agency agreement.
Proposed changes
The first change made was to remove the operations and procedures from the 28E agency agreement. Those items would be in a separate document called the by-laws, Dominguez said.
Another proposed change was to have seven board of directors. Two board of directors would be selected by city council, two board of directors would be selected by rural trustees and then there would be three at-large members, Dominguez said. One of the at-large members would be a business owner in the West Liberty area, a resident in the city and a resident from the rural area. No volunteers from the fire department or EMS would be on the board.
Finances
The city and the rural trustees would each pay the same amount for the services from the fire/EMS departments. The amount would be determined by Jan. 1.
“We did this because as a task force, we don’t really care how the city and rural figure it out as long as it’s fair and equal,” Dominguez said. “We just want the services to be there.”
A clerk would be responsible for the accounts payable, said Mindy Sickels-Sterbenz.
“The clerk position is a position that would be hired by the board?” Mayor Ethan Anderson asked her.
She replied yes.
The clerk would also work with the fire chief and treasurer to create a budget, she added.
A treasurer would be a volunteer position, Sickels-Sterbenz said. This person would be responsible for taking checks to the bank, making sure budget items are appropriately itemized in the budget and would sign checks under $5,000.
Any check over $5,000 would need to be approved by the board, she added.
The treasurer supervisor would be responsible for opening and closing bank accounts for the agency, work on investments for the agency and would oversee the clerk and treasurer to make sure things were running smoothly.
A board of director member would serve as secretary for the agency. This person would write minutes from the board meetings, respond to any public records request and post when the meetings would be held, Sickels-Sterbenz said.
Fire chief duties
“The fire chief would be responsible for all payments,” Sickels-Sterbenz said. “Any expenses or payments that come through, the fire chief has to see that and has to look through what it is. If he doesn’t know what it is, he does not sign on it.”
The proposed 28E agreement said the volunteers on the fire/EMS departments would select their fire chief.
West Liberty City Attorney Steven Haverkamp said in his legal opinion the board of directors should be the ones to select who the fire chief is because that is how other agencies are ran. The board of directors would also have oversight of how the fire chief operates the department.
Haverkamp’s statement drew several opposing comments from volunteer fire department members including Sickels-Sterbenz. She told Haverkamp that’s not how all agencies are ran. The volunteers appoint who the fire chief is.
Assistant Fire Chief Tom Christensen said the firefighters are the ones who know if the fire chief is able to do the job. He has been a member of the fire department for 40 years and they way the fire chief is selected works.
EMS employee Bret Carlson agreed with Tom Christensen. The volunteers would follow the chief into a burning building if asked to. The fire chief’s job was more than just signing checks
Consultant
Fire task force member Eric Christensen worked on finding a consultant to review the proposed 28E agency agreement, Dominguez said. A proposal from CPSM (Center for Public Safety Management) has worked with a few cities in Iowa and has worked with fire departments.
“They have a lot of experience and they have a lot of consultants throughout the United States that work on agreements between fire departments and municipalities,” Christensen said. “When I talked to them I felt very comfortable in their experience.”
Normally, they work with bigger clients but they were willing to work with the task force and wanted to review the documents, he added.
Anderson asked how many consultants Christensen reached out to. Christensen said he reached out to several different consultant groups but only four got back to him. Of those four, he found only two of them to be reliable. CPSM was the group that responded right away and wanted to review everything.
City Manager Lee Geertz said she was excited to work with CPSM. They had a good reputation and were affiliated with the International City/County Management Association, which city is a member of. CPSM was familiar with ARPA (American Rescue Plan Act) and other items the city dealt with recently.
No decisions were made during the the work session. The city council and task force both agreed the process to review the proposed 28E agency agreement was moving forward but still would take some time before being finalized.