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Fire Wards Meeting

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Yeah. But you can't, it's not product filling big bottles afterwards, huh? Plus you have automatic, okay. Yeah, so- So so- All right, should we start or is Mark both? No, we'll start. Sorry, we're live. Okay. Alright, everybody, well welcome to the June eighth, twenty twenty-six board of fire awards meeting. We'll call the meeting to order. We'll start with the Pledge of Allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, to the Republic for which it stands. One nation, under God, in indivisible liberty and justice for all. All right. I don't see a lot of public- we have no appointments, not aware of any new business other than It's coming up in a little bit, but this is my last meeting as a board of fire ward member, also because of my current residency status. I will abstain tonight from any voting. We can keep things moving under old business, we have the approval of minutes from the May 11th board of firewalls meeting. I'll make a motion that we accept the minutes as written by Laurel. Second. You know, second by Connie. All those in favor, signify by saying aye. Aye. All right. item two. we have an MOU for the Cascade to Amherst prior update, Brian, you wanna- Yeah. So I sent this MOU out to you guys for review prior to doing anything with it. Just a little bit of background history in case people are watching we have Cascade System that we purchased under a grant back in twenty eighteen. because it was purchased under a grant, there's limited things we can do with it. we can't sell it, we can't liquidate or do anything crazy with it. the- Grant here allowed us to buy another brand new cascade for the, for the building. Our plan was to move that other cascade up to the hilltop station, which suddenly changed course. Obviously, we're not going to the hilltop station anymore, so I now have this extra cascade system for filling SCBA bottles. In speaking with the Amherst fire chief, theirs had died. they have no funding for it, no funding mechanism. They were gonna apply for a grant, but these things take years sometimes So they're having to travel outside of their community to go fill bottles every time they have a fire or, or need to refill a SCBA. long story short, we went back to FEMA, requested permission for Amherst to be able to utilize our SCBA cascade that we purchased. Through FEMA and they would be, you know, up and running. They wouldn't own it, they'd just be using it at, in, in the time being until they got funding or they were able to secure their own. They would pay for moving it, maintaining it, and everything goes along with it. So we got approval back from FEMA, they said, "Yep, we, we love the concept and, and they'll, they'll allow us to do that." Drafted this MOU just so everybody understands the playing field, it does belong to us they, they get to use it, et cetera. So I w-- I wanted you guys to review it just to see if you had any questions or concerns. Tonight, coincidentally or not the town administrator is presenting the same package to the city of Amherst, town of Amherst. So if everyone signs off, everybody thinks it's okay, then we'll enter the end into the Agreement and we'll be on our way. I look good to me. I'm good to go. Thanks, Kayla. When was the last time we had that service? Just so they don't come back saying, "Hey, this doesn't work." Okay. Last year. Yeah, I, IPS came in and, and did a full full service on it. Okay. Yeah. It'll be on their dime, but when it gets moved, it's part of putting it in service, then you'll know the service is all, yeah, it's all tested, air, air quality tested the whole thing. Yeah, this, this isn't gonna cost a town as well. Right. No, no, no, I just wanted to make sure there's nothing to come back on us saying, "Hey, this doesn't work, so now we have to get it fixed." Right, right. That's all. So as part of moving it, is an evaluation gonna be done on it just in case, like Derek said, there's any, anything wrong with it that you weren't aware of? When it gets set up, yeah, we'll do a complete run-through of it Yeah. And, and as well as the air quality test. Okay. If you're all in agreement, then if they come back and they're in agreement, they, they like the idea and the concept, then then I'll go ahead and, and move forward with All right. Everybody's good on that? We'll move on. With the bottom line, I don't know. All right. Newtown, I'm not sure the synonym, F A G. That's the, that's the name of that new time punch. Yeah, it's not the email. Yeah, I, I just wanted to kind of bring you up to speed on, on that program, only because the entire department Most of the departments that have been able to utilize it seems to be a hot topic so for a while it sort of was going live, we-- they put the brakes on it. It suddenly went live, but we weren't in position to be able to utilize it yet. I didn't have a kiosk, I had no way to get the department up to speed. You get a recall, we've got almost fifty members in our roster and so we've been struggling to get this thing up and running. We now have a kiosk out in near the Ebro Estuary for our members to utilize. So this is gonna apply to the full-time, part-time, and per diem members only Call department is, is not practical to use. Most of you guys respond from your house, and this whole thing is geofence, so you actually have to be here on site to punch in. Unless you get special exception, and we weren't gonna have a whole bunch of special exceptions across the, across the department. So I was trying to make this go live this morning, apparently the invite email didn't go out. To our department, we finally got that out. They started to log in, it locked everyone out so now we're trying to get through that hurdle, but we should have this up and running. Hopefully sometime this week and then start in earnest the next pay period, which is Saturday night into Sunday. it should be pretty easy, you just have to put a badge number in there and punch, and your time starts when you go to leave. Much in Europe. So this should be pretty straightforward. Is it gonna be a period of time where we use both to make sure that that's what we're doing right now? we will utilize both until everybody's kind of up to speed The, the couple things I have is some of these members don't work for a month or two, and then they come in and they're supposed to be caught up to speed on big changes like this, so I know we're gonna be stumbling through this for a while and- What happens is if they miss a punch or they forget to punch in, you have to go back and modify the timesheets and the whole process goes on. Is that Ashley that does that or I'm having Ashley do all of this, yeah. She actually had manager privileges but she couldn't do anything. She, her title was in there as manager, but she wasn't able to change punches or fix punches or do anything. So they're working to get that, that up to speed. It, it's just, 'cause I know for the first month or so, it's gonna be a constant, constant. I put, you know, if you notice the signs on the way in, it says, "Stop. Did you, did you remember to punch in? Stop. Did you remember to punch out on the way out? On the other side? Yeah. I'm trying to make it as easy as possible for everybody. But we, we are kind of jumping in both feet. Everybody good with that? No. You have no choice. All right. Not a good system for the fire department, I tell you that. item four we touched on it a few minutes ago. I'll be retiring from the board of fire boards in line with my other retirement here from the department so this is my last meeting so I don't know if you wanna do it under, do it now or you wanna do it in a bit after some discussion, but You guys need to pick a new chairman. So, why don't you guys wanna pick a new chairman? Or you can, I mean, you could decide to wait 'til next week. It's- It's up to you guys how you wanna, you wanna do it, but you probably, you probably should do it tonight. I would probably, yeah, based upon the number of things that are happening, I would, yeah, be ready to go, yeah, suggest you do it, 'cause someone's gonna Just like incident command, somebody's gotta be in charge. So if you guys wanna discuss it, dominate somebody, you guys do your thing. Well, Brandon's already the co-chair, so that's kind of the way I also would suggest to just vice chair, vice chair, right? Sorry. So I nominate Brandon to be the chair. I'll second that. I accept it. No, well, you have that done. okay, all those amendments most has been made to elect Brandon Marinich Chairperson, Chairman of the Board of Fire Awards. all those in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Sounds unanimous, so congratulations, Brian. Thank you, Brian. Thank you, Brian. Thank you, Brian. Well, if that, that's, that's the case, I'd like to elect, elect the vice chair. Yeah. I'd like to elect Derek as vice chair. Unaccepted. Second? Alright, so motion's been made to nominate and vote to approve Derek Danis as vice chair of the board of fire boards. It's been seconded. All those in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Sounds unanimous. congratulations, Derek. Thanks. All right, internal reports. item one is a station update. yep, so stations moving along. We have a deadline of June 30th to submit all invoices so no further funding after June 30th. we shouldn't have an issue with that we have an end goal of June 12th for all construction work other than the BioMix. Which is still, still hanging out there we've consulted with UNH and the gentleman who wrote the current policy and asked for guidance He's given, he's given to the contractor. if all else fails, he's agreed to give us the names of some contractors in the area that have met the standard if our contractor can't. So that's kind of our plan B. We're allowing the primary contractor to figure this out and get it implemented before June thirtieth, so time is extremely short because once you have a sample made, you have to send it out for testing and then get the results back, the engineer has to approve it, and then- And then the stuff gets laid in, so it's, we're, we are right up against the wire as far as this goes. so we're, we're coming up with some contingencies to get that accomplished and done. The Department of Defense is coming out on June 19th to do a walkthrough of the site and inventory all equipment and everything that's here. all equipment has been reported to them including serial numbers, quantity, date of purchase, how much we paid for it, all that stuff. It's been submitted, so assuming they don't find something that they say is outside of the normal realm we, we should be fine. That same gentleman that will be here doing the inspection The 19th, he'll be here on the 20th for the open house as well, so he's gonna do a, a stay over. So we're in pretty good shape. We have a few little minor things that are hanging out the brick order that came in, we finally got the majority of the bricks. His Came in, came in broke, of course. Oh geez, is there more bricks coming? No. The, the two that I ordered didn't-- I don't, I don't know where they are. They're not there? Okay, send me after. Okay. Go check that. I was gonna check with Ashley 'cause I just looked, so I don't know. Ashley told me everything was, other than, oh, I'm sorry, there was, there was two that-- Well, no, those were fixes. Those were spelling errors that were now fixed. The problem one, one was, one was mine, but there was two that-- We can talk after. Yeah. I saw one from you, but- It was, yeah. anyway, so those are all laid out by the flagpole, so that last batch will fit nicely over by the flagpole, that'll be done tomorrow the contractor supposed to be coming in last minute, pulling everything up and putting that in. Other than that, there was a small leak on the roof, which I thought was patched, and it wasn't patched, so that's why the machinery is still outside. They're gonna be up there and patching that. So that's all been fixed, okay. Other than the ceiling, which is our responsibility, so it was a weather-related incident and so they fixed the roof. The plumbing, but the interior is our responsibility, so there's a small patch that has to be put in place. Are you looking for somebody to do that or do you have somebody lined up? We know a shiebraker? I know somebody can do it. He was on this board, but he's not here tonight. I, I can ask him if he'll do it. I, I would love it if somebody wants to, wants to do it, that'd be great. I'll, I'll, sure I can get somebody to do it myself. So yeah, yeah. I, I mean, if somebody can take care of it, it's Small, two, two by two holes. but I'd, I'd like to get that patch cleaned up before the open house just 'cause it's kind of nautical, but if not, that's fine too. Yeah, so we're, we're, we're looking like we're in pretty good shape. There are deliverables that are due out until September 30th, but those are sort of after the fact. and- I'm not concerned. It's, it's more this deadline of, of the 30th that I've been focusing on getting us across that finish line. Does the DOE have to come out here to inspect anything or are they-- The 19, the 19th, the 19th, okay, all right, all right. I didn't know if that was-- Yeah, they do a full walkthrough and inventory. The grass has to be it didn't-- So that's part of the operation to rain from it? The grass has to be at eighty-five percent completion or, or growth and we're pretty much on the cusp of that at this point. this weather hasn't helped. It's dry, hot weather. It's- Not good, and we've had some issues with water pressure. So sprinkler, we've been trying to put out, you know, a couple at a time, we have three acres of grass and unfortunately the Peruvian members are running around trying to water the lawn and put sprinklers up over there. Running out of water so that for, it's a whole thing. But we're, we're getting there. I think we'll have all that stuff settled. But the biomes is the biggest thing we're, we're waiting on. That's That the engineer won't sign off on the AOT until that biometrics is in place and signed off. So that's the big sticking point. How'd the garage doors come up? I know you were, you were coming in to look at that. Yeah. So there's been multiple issues with the garage doors. So Bay four, which is the door I used to park in there was something wrong with the eyes. They, they weren't lining up right or they were constantly getting out of adjustment. They came back, they did a bunch of work We're back into realignment. There's, there's been like one thing after another, some sort of electrical gremlin there. They're on it, they're making good, you know, every time we call and say, hey, there's an issue, they come back and they're probably at the point where they're gonna replace the motor and- That assembly pretty smooth. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. because the eyes will now stay lined up, they stay green, everything seems fine and, and then it'll get stuck open and won't close. So it's- They can't figure it out but they are, they're working on it. You're over that with that, that That broken tube in the floor. So they're supposed to be coming back, the engineer for Grand State Plumbing and Heating is supposed to come back with a report on how that's gonna affect the heating system and whether or not it will affect the heating system. They would, they gave me the option, they said I can either tear it up and patch the hole and put it back, but it's gonna kind of look like garbage, so I want like a patch. Oh, no, that's right. or If we're agreeable and we wanna zone that out, and there's plenty of heat because it's radiant all around, in other words, if it was towards the side of the building, I would say absolutely not tear it apart, because it's in the middle of a heated slab, they don't think there's gonna be any issue with heat loss and therefore just take that zone out, we're good, and we keep the aesthetics of, of the building And you know, tear it all apart. So until they tell me, yes, a hundred percent, that it won't affect the heating, I'm not willing to sign off one way or the other. They own the project either way. So Whatever we decide to do, that's, that's what we decide to do. Any other questions, comments? All right. And we'll slide into item two, the chief report. so I sent out the monthly report, hopefully you guys have that Got it. End of May, we had a total of two hundred and eighty-six emergency calls to town, fifty-seven for the month of May. new members, this is we're gonna have to start putting some new, new members back on If we look at the calendar moving forward, June and, and July, there's a tremendous amount of openings. I think it's one of these things where the warm weather's coming in and people don't necessarily care to work that extra shift here or there. So There's a tremendous amount of vacancies, and if that's gonna be the case, we're gonna have to backfill those vacancies. So I have six or seven applications that are in hand, and I have a couple people that reached out to me recently looking to fill some positions as well. So it's not like there's nobody in the wings, I just haven't had a chance to even entertain them. I've had some there for two months. for a while, I didn't want to oversaturate the market and- And have too many people fighting for positions and not getting them and leaving anyway but now we, we really need to start filling those positions again. As far as filling those positions up until this month, we were, we were actually really pretty good. I wanna say we were probably ninety-five percent Fill rate for our Perdian shift, so we were, we were in a really good position but I'm, I'm seeing the slide moving forward. as you know, last month we closed down the Hilton Station the EOC grant, so for all this equipment and all the IT equipment and all this stuff, I requested reimbursement funding from the state the woman who- Was managing our grant left, someone else took over, they're trying to bring themselves up to speed, so there'll be maybe a delay in getting our funding back by knocking on our door Because I'd really like to get that money back in the coffers. Yeah, we, we talked about enjoying this platform Alright, the MOU, the timesheets. Okay on that. Any other questions, Chief? All right. second public comment I don't see as needed or necessary this time then I'll submit a request for non-public for RSA ninety-one dash A colon three dot Roman numeral two, A, B, and C. Second that. Alright. Roll call. Chair, yes. Yes. I'm just- I'm just, I'm just kidding. I can't. Just turn the camera off. That's like I tell my wife every day, "Turn this off again, download it." And then I'll get-- There's a few other things I want to add. Okay, we're on. We're just waiting for one of the board members to return, and then we'll go back into session. I think we- Because you have an account you can log in anywhere, but I'm not sure if there's something you needed to access. I made a copy of all my files. You don't, I don't know where it is So let's make a motion to seal the minutes. So I should probably do that. Yep, motion to seal. Oh, yeah, welcome back. Oh, yeah, welcome back. So we'll make a motion to seal the minutes from the non-public. Second? Okay. Hello, Jared. Yes. Yes. I don't know what happened. Make a picture. Huh? Make a picture of it. Alright, maybe we'll just do it that way, right? Yeah. Alright, so We can entertain motion to adjourn. So, all those in favor? Okay. Thank you.