Ashland City Council
Work Session Minutes
Tuesday, March 30, 2010
Mayor’s Office 2nd floor
4:00 p.m.
Tuesday, March 30, 2010, 4:00 p.m. Mayor’s Office.
Purpose: Potential Combined Dispatch
Attendance:
Council members: Ruth Detrow, Sandra Tunnell, Stephen Stuart, Robert L. Valentine W1.
Excused- Robert M. Valentine W2
Mayor: Glen Stewart
Finance Director: Larry Paxton
Fire Department: Rick Anderson
Fire Department: Mark Burgess
Council Clerk: Valarie Bishoff
Media: T-G Jeff Russ, WMFD
Audience: none
Roll Call:
Ruth Detrow W3,
Sandra Tunnell W4
Stephen Stuart At- Large/President
Robert L. Valentine W1
Robert M. Valentine W2- Excused
Motion to Robert M. Valentine W2 by Stephen L. Stuart, seconded by Robert L. Valentine W1.
Ayes: Ruth Detrow, Sandra Tunnell, Stephen Stuart, Robert L. Valentine W1.
PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE:
Stephen
Stuart: The focus of the Work Session today is to have a
discussion regarding the potential of combining the dispatch
services. Mark, I think you are going to bring us up to date on
what has transpired between Wayne County and Ashland County?
Mark
Burgess, Fire Chief: A little history about Ashland, and Larry
has some information he is just getting for us, so I appreciate
that. Ashland County was one of the last few counties in the
State to go to 911. When we went to 911, I think there were seven
other counties that didn’t have it. We went to it. We met
at the Fire Station and I think it was probably in the early ‘90’s when
we started that conversation and it ended up with dispatching occurring
at the Sheriff’s office, the Fire Station, and the Police
Station. A 911 caller would make a call and it would go to the
Sheriff’s office and as soon as they found out it was the City Fire, it
was handed off with a one button transfer to the Fire Police Department
and we handled it. We had dispatchers sitting in each of those
locations. In about ’98, ’99, in that time frame, we combined dispatch
to the current location it is. Where we put everybody in the same
room and there are benefits to having that set up. You can see
those benefits in where the staffing is a little bit different and you
can share your work force. There are some economies there.
That is the way we have been operating since then. Larry handed
out this from Finance and those are the last five years of what we have
been paying for dispatch services. You can see in 2005 it was
$329,000 dollars and in 2009 it was $516,000 dollars. That is
probably one of the biggest driving forces into starting this
conversation. In July of 2009, the Tri-County Chiefs started
meeting, Fire Chiefs in Richland, Ashland and Wayne County started
meeting at Sallies on Main Street to discuss various response problems
and issues that we had in an effort to regionalize and to help each
other out because all of us were experiencing economic issues.
Money was getting tight, staffing was an issue and we still had the
same risks involved and we had to work together better. We always
had mutual aide with them and could call them, but were there other
things that we could talk about? First thing we talked about was
our mechanics; that if we could share our mechanics or the mechanics
would share their tools, their specialized tools, it would save us a
little bit of money. As those conversations went on, dispatch
came up that everybody was paying for dispatch services in three
counties and there were some issues with that. The information we
are getting as we were responding to calls wasn’t the best. It
was okay that we were getting the address but we wanted more. We
wanted cross streets, we wanted hydrant locations. We are trying
to get better service out of that, but the cost is a big issue.
The cost keeps going up like everything else, we didn’t have that money
to do it so we had to start looking at it. In September of last
year, September 17th, we had our first regionalized dispatch meeting
and we invited Fire Departments, Sheriff offices, law enforcement, the
Mayors, Township Trustees from the three counties to a meeting and we
met down at Sallies and out of that conversation, the Mayor from
Wooster was there, our Mayor was there and we decided, both Mayors
volunteered both Police Chiefs and both Fire Chiefs to work on a
committee to start investigating this. That is how we started
this process, this project. Where we are today is we have been
meeting, we have traveled to several different sites to see that this
is operational. So this isn’t something that we are dreaming up that
hasn’t been tried. Stow has one that is operational for Fire and
Police. The Red Center to the east of us. We also went to
MECC (Metropolitan Emergency Communications Center). MECC is in
Columbus (Gahanna). They have been doing it for a while but they
are only fire. They are just now branching out into the Police
side of it. We can talk about that later.
Mayor Stewart: Mark, while that is on your mind, give us the MECC.
Mark Burgess, Fire Chief: mecc911.org.
Mayor
Stewart: That is a very interesting site to look at. If you
open it right, you will even be able to hear their dialogue.
Mark
Burgess: You can listen to it and you can see it. If you
have any problems with it, call Rick Anderson at the Fire
Station. He will help you get on that site. This is a good
example to hear a decent dispatching job with the cross streets;
the type of information that we need to do an effective response.
When we talk about dispatch, we need to have a system that is there 24
hours/day, seven days a week. It is reliable. There is some
redundancy because we know phone lines go down. We have some of
that now. We also need for our standpoint to perform our services
better, we need data. We need to know how long does it take for
them to handle calls. How long does it take us to turn out?
How long does it take us to respond? All of those things to help
us improve our performance is information that we need. We can’t
always get that. They don’t always record everything that we want
out of it and that is part of the measurements that we are used to in
improving performance. You know that we have gone through the
Baldridge process as a city and we need data to support what you
do. That is one of the things that we like to have because that
helps us make decisions. As we go down the road, we need to break
out how long our response time is which is everything from the time of
the call until we get on the scene to help us make better decisions on
how we respond and how we do things.
Mayor Stewart: That is not just common to Ashland Ohio. That is common throughout the various safety departments.
Mark
Burgess: Everywhere. So this isn’t something new. It
is just a change in the way we do things. If you look at
dispatching. We have three people sitting there and they are
waiting on 911 calls; what are they doing while they are waiting?
In our case, they are sitting there waiting on the call. We have
dispatchers down there. They are doing some clerical stuff, but
most of the time, they are just waiting for that call to come in.
The Fire Department runs about 3600 runs a year. That is
10/day. Police Department is at 15,000 calls for
service. The County Fire Departments, they are going to run
right around 1,000 total, may be a little bit more total a year.
Then you have the Sheriff’s office. So the three dispatchers are
sitting there, and you add those calls up and divide that out by the
number of hours in a day, there is downtime.
Mayor
Stewart: I want to clarify something. I keep interrupting,
but it is important. When the police are dispatched to a site for
whatever reason; they are often numerous follow-up calls to ensure
their safety and there are calls wanting a response for it to run a
plate or a license, so a call, does that 15,000, is that all inclusive
of all of this dialogue Chief?
Dave Marcelli, Acting Police
Chief: Giving you an example: Radioed dispatch tapes from
one case that the officer needed for court, there were 17 different
radio transmissions.
Mayor Stewart: We need to give
credit to the dispatchers for; they are not sitting there twiddling
their thumbs because 1 = 17 in that case.
Mark
Burgess: Like our calls, there are numerous transactions back and
forth between dispatch. We just had a DOA north of town.
You are responding, you arrive at the scene and they acknowledge
that. You tell them we have a DOA. You have to call for the
coroner. There is that communication back and forth so it does
take time. The concept is that there is some downtime in
between all of these calls. That is what gets you thinking about
sharing resources Wooster, they are similar to us. They are going
to have about the same number of calls and we have verified that
through our meetings. They have had a few more calls than we did,
but they are close. If we can use the same number of dispatchers
to handle call volume; real simple math, that is half the cost of what
we are spending now. Now we know that doesn’t always work out
that way. We have to crunch the numbers and we will do
that. We started the discussion and talked about what it would
cost to share this. We have limited the conversation to the core
group of people. It is mainly going to be Wooster – city fire and
police; Ashland – city fire and police; Wayne County Sheriff and we
will find out tomorrow morning if Orville will come on board. We
decided that if we start with that core group and start through the
process of looking at what it is going to cost us, we can come up with
some figures that will allow us to make a decision as whether to
proceed or not. We know we are going to need some help with
money. Funding is going to be an issue because there is some
start up costs. One of the things that we are working on right
now is an implementation grant and that is why we need the core group
of entities to work on this because we are applying for a grant with
Efficient GovNow for about $45,000.00 dollars. There is a 20%
match to that and that is why we need the commitment and I will come
back to that in a second. The commitment of those entities so
that we can cover that match. We need to have some people that
are committed. Our last meeting in Wooster, Wooster’s Law
Director was there and he coined this phrase: “What we really need is a
noncommittal commitment agreement”. That sounds like an attorney
doesn’t it? We need an agreement that we are proceeding
with the implementation research and figuring out how to do this, what
it is going to cost, but we can’t commit any of us, because if we get
into this so far and determine that it is not cost effective or that we
run into a roadblock that we can stop the process and not be committed
to a failing project. So that is the noncommittal part of the
commitment. It makes sense. We laugh about that and joke
about it and we all understand to move forward, we have to have the
entities on the paper for the grant. The grant is in process; it
is due by April 19, 2010. The Wooster people have been talking
with the Efficient GovNow people and we have a good chance of getting
this money. They are helping us. They have given us some
pointers on how to write the grant and how to work on this. Part
of the 20%, the money we have, can be in the soft costs. The time
and effort that we have been putting forward into this project can
count toward some of that money. So instead of having to put in
$3,000.00 dollars for the city of Ashland. We may only have to put
$2,000.00 in because between Dave, Rick and I, we have put in $1,000.00
dollars worth of hours and we can calculate that. Starting with
our meetings and going through the time spent on this. We have
had frequent meetings. The concept is sound that if we join
forces, we can share dispatching. We can have some economies in
scale in that we are not duplicating back-up generators, we are not
duplicating physical sites, but another part of it that we are not
duplicating, next generation 911 equipment is coming out.
That is with cell phones that we need to be able to accept texting and
pictures over the cell phone into 911 and we can’t do that now.
Not many places can. Part of the problem is, it is
expensive. Right now we don’t have the funding and I say we, as
in the county and there is no real plan on where to get the
money. You are talking several hundred thousand dollars to do
this project. If we can pool our resources where we just have one
batch of equipment that we need instead of two or three, it is cheaper
for us. I think that makes sense. If we can get grant money
to do it which there is some money out there for that, when you talk
regionalization you are talking inter-operability which is a buzz word
for grants, you are crossing jurisdiction lines which also helps
because that is collaboration and Efficient Gov because we are trying
to serve the tax payer better.
Robert L. Valentine W1: Is this a state or a federal grant?
Mark Burgess: I think it is State, Egov.
Mayor Stewart: Egov, it is State. You know where their money comes from Bob.
Stephen Stuart: I think they are private dollars.
Mark Burgess: Some private dollars.
Stephen
Stuart: Is this a voted on grant like the process that you have
to generate the most votes? That is it as we heard in a
previous presentation.
Mark Burgess: Yes.
Stephen Stuart: I think it is private money.
Mark
Burgess: Kent State is part of it. Speaking of the
University, Cleveland State University did an implementation plan with
ten Cleveland suburbs; Parma, Berea. All of those up in that area
and we have a copy of it. It is 156 pages of really good
information. The Executive Summary is a page and a half, so that
is an easy way to get out of it. It is good information on how to
do this. We are going to work with Cleveland State to help with
that process because of the time deadlines. The system is there
and we are using some of their paper to help us with the implementation
plan. We need to come up with some benchmarks and some milestones
to show that we are accomplishing things. It is part of the whole
process. The initial numbers, and we have worked with
Wooster on these numbers and Dave did a lot of it with the staffing and
Rick with the technology. We looked at the call volume and the
dispatching, staffing. We think we can staff and do this for
about $350,000 dollars a year.
Mayor Stewart: For the City or each entity?
Mark Burgess: It would be $350,000 for Wooster, $350,000 for us, ballpark figures.
Ruth Detrow: In 2009 we were paying $516,000 and it is more this year?
Mark Burgess: Yes, it is $550,000.
Stephen Stuart: Where is the Ashland County Sheriff’s office on this? Are they interested in this?
Mayor
Stewart: Let me respond and take Mark off of the
hook. Sheriff Risner has attended some of the meetings. The
last dialogue I had with the Sheriff is he is not really on board with
this, however he is going to be receiving another invitation to a
meeting tomorrow. There are Sheriff’s organizations, Wayne County
specifically that is on board with this and I certainly don’t want to
write the Sheriff’s department off. We want them to be a part of
this.
Stephen Stuart: What about Loudonville?
Mark
Burgess: Loudonville at this time is not interested in it and
they are watching us. Loudonville dispatcher is in the Police
station down on Water Street. That dispatcher performs a
lot of functions other than dispatching. She is the clerk.
She is the receptionist. She wears about ten different hats in
that office. She is there by herself most of the time and does a
lot of things. So for them to combine and move isn’t really going
to be a cost saving to them right now.
Stephen Stuart: What do they do on 24/7?
Mark
Burgess: They staff it 24/7. They have one
dispatcher. They dispatch for Loudonville and Perrysville.
Now as I think this changes and as this project goes on, one of the
things that we are looking at is we need to have processes in place
that if somebody wants to leave the group, that there is a way to do
that and we don’t get strapped with having to absorb that cost and also
we can add people because like we said, the three counties are
interested. Not everybody is ready to be in on the planning stage
of it and commitment and some of the departments, Jeromesville is one
example that is very interested, but they are just kind of hanging back
a little bit because they are concerned about cost. The county
Fire departments haven’t paid anything into 911. They have been
getting their services free. This is new to them so they have to
figure out a funding mechanism to pay because eventually they are going
to have to.
Mayor Stewart: They are similar in Wayne County too aren’t they?
Mark
Burgess: Similar in Wayne County. The smaller departments
haven’t had to pay for their services but as we know, that can’t
continue. We need to work on that.
Robert L. Valentine
W1: This isn’t a voluntary thing, for instance, if the Sheriff’s
department doesn’t go along with it, what does that mean?
Mark
Burgess: If the Sheriff department doesn’t go with this, there
are two options and we need to investigate both of them thoroughly but
they are both doable because we have seen it done in other areas.
The first one is that the Sheriff dispatch would answer the 911 calls
and it would be a one-button transfer to us like we used to do.
Mayor Stewart: To wherever the dispatch is, okay.
Mark
Burgess: We would handle it, if the call came from the city,
let’s say from your house, the Sheriff would answer 911 what’s your
emergency? You would say I need the squad, they would see on the
msag (master street address guide) that it was a city resident and hit
the button and in milliseconds you would be talking to a fire
dispatcher to deal with that. The other one is that we go to the
911 planning committee which is three members that we started with back
in the late ‘80’s, early ‘90’s and we rewrite the 911 plan. It
goes to a vote out to the public and you go with the entities that have
the biggest populations, the city you need 60% of the population to
approve it. So you rewrite the plan that the 911 calls that
originate in the entities where we want, which would be the city of
Ashland and the two townships that we cover, would go to the
appropriate 911 center, the regionalized dispatch; everything else
would go to the Sheriff’s office. Does that make sense? We
have two different paths that we can go with that. We cover
Milton and Montgomery for Fire and EMS and we also cover Orange
Township for just EMS. They have a small volunteer department.
Sandra Tunnell: What kind of timeframe are you looking at?
Mark
Burgess: Well we would like to do it tomorrow. If we can
get the grant in by the 19th of April, I think we are looking at the
earliest anything could be implemented would probably be middle of 2012.
Mayor Stewart: 2012 or 2011? So we are 2 ½ years away?
Mark Burgess: I would say two years.
Rick Anderson: 18 months minimum.
Mayor Stewart: Well, I could see 18 months.
Mark
Burgess: But a lot of it depends on what the Sheriff does,
because if we have to go through the change in the 911 plan, there are
timing issues for Resolutions and Ordinances having to be passed by
Council and by the Commissioners in the planning stage and then it has
to be put out for voters and it just marches things out because of the
time constraints that you have to do it. If we go the route with
one button transfer or the Sheriff comes on board, it could shorten
that because we don’t have to do that.
Sandra Tunnell: People could still have time to come back in.
Stephen
Stuart: Could you start with the one button transfer and still go
through the process of redoing the 911 plan? Because I think in
the long term that makes the best plan.
Rick Anderson: Not 18 months. 18 months would be the minimum that we could actually be up and running.
Mark
Burgess: Rick Anderson is the Assistant Chief with the Fire
Department. He has been attending all of these meetings
also. Part of it is because I am leaving in a few days, but so we
have some consistency through the process. He has been part of it
just like Dave has. I have the short straw for presenting. I
think that the project is a viable project. This is just an
implementation phase that we need to continue that. There is a
lot of work to be done yet. What we ask of Council and the Mayor
is that noncommittal commitment letter so that we can proceed with
that. That is one of the benchmarks or the milestones that we
need for the grant to proceed. So while there is a lot of
information that I gave you and we have more of it but I am running out
of time. We are asking for your support knowing that at any time if
something comes up, a red flag comes up, we can stop it but we think it
is a worthwhile project. The potential for saving the money is
there. We control the cost. We can bring in more people and
as this progresses if we can get a few more people on and start this
process, then our costs are maintained and maybe can decrease a little
bit. We think it is going to catch on. Quite frankly, we
want to be in the drivers seat, we should be leading and if we are
leading at Wooster and Ashland through this then we can control what is
going on and then have people coming in and paying to us instead of us
paying somebody else to do this.
Sandra Tunnell: When you said 20%, we had 20% match, is it we of four at 20%?
Mark Burgess: The total group.
Robert
L. Valentine W1: Finances are certainly important, but service is
important too. I understand wanting to save money but I don’t
want to save money at the expense of hurting service. We won’t
find that out until, implementation.
Mark Burgess:
Implementation. We know through MECC and Stow, Red Center that
the service will be equal to or better. One of the first things
that happens is the upgrade in technology that with the current system,
we are operating on one or two screens and it is somewhat limited
because the dispatcher and the way it is operated. As we progress
through this and study it, there are efficiencies that we can improve
from the time it takes to answer a call how many rings and the dispatch
time and that information so that the reliability the information, the
caller won’t see a difference. They may see it better because
service is exactly what we are all about.
Sandra Tunnell: What does the Red Center cover, or whom does it cover?
Mark Burgess: Red Center is western Stark County.
Sandra Tunnell: Who does Stow cover?
Mark
Burgess: Stow covers Tallmadge, Mogador, Stow and there is
another small fire department outside the county that they cover. They
do fire and police.
Mayor Stewart: They also go beyond the normal jurisdiction?
Mark Burgess: They go outside the county.
Mayor Stewart: That is a concern generated locally about jurisdiction.
Mark
Burgess: There is a dispatch center in Indiana, and we have not
gone to see it yet. We have been to MECC and to Stow and Dave has
been to the Red Center that dispatches for 40 agencies in one
system. MECC copied off of their set up and so that is why we
went down to MECC.
Robert L. Valentine W1: How many do we have in the State so far? Do we have any?
Mark Burgess: Of these regional dispatching? Four that we know of.
Rick
Anderson: Numbers, I don’t know but with attending different
conferences, it is not only within the Fire service, it is a huge
buzzword of regionalizing dispatching communications. Also in
talking, Chief Burgess mentioned, we are doing research on the
technology end of it and talking with vendors, I spoke with one last
week, they were coming back from their annual convention in Las Vegas
and the vendors are pushing this also because it is quite frankly with
technology, you can run dispatch from a computer. It is basically
Internet protocol.
Mark Burgess: One of the big things you
can see is in the technology, the size of the console, or the area of
the workstation. Right now for all the buttons you need and there
is wiring for each button. It is mechanical and they can fail, it
generates heat and problems. Everything now, the new technology
it is touch screen and it runs off of CAT 5 cable and computers and
there is redundancy built into it so that you don’t have the
footprint. You don’t need the space that you normally do, it is
cooler and things go better because there is less moving pieces.
Ruth Detrow: So one thing we could do, there are probably several places in this area where it could be housed.
Mark
Burgess: I would look at the current dispatch center that we have
in Ashland and we could probably put six workstations in that
facility. Today’s technology vs yesterday’s technology.
That is the nuts and bolts of it. If there are any questions.
Mayor
Stewart: I wholeheartedly support going forward at this
stage. I think that based on strategic planning group that is
moving forward right now, duplication of efforts; reduction of cost,
wise use of the resources that we have all drives us towards the use of
technology. I would not say that I am unhappy at all with the
service that we receive. There is a lot of dialogue between the
Sheriff’s office and the Fire division and the Police division.
We are not considering leaving in my opinion for that reason. My
big drive is, we have costs we have to get our arms around and as you
can see in a short period of five years we have gone from $329,000 and
we were asked and it was approached to us at $650,000 for this coming
year and we are still working on the agreement, the language but we are
at $550,000.
Mark Burgess: $550,000 and any major equipment replacement.
Mayor Stewart: We are working on that language, we are saying $550,000.
Stephen
L. Stuart: For our April 6th Council meeting, can we have a
Resolution on for the non-committment commitment Resolution? For
our consideration?
Mark Burgess: We can make that happen if you wish.
Stephen Stuart: Does that make sense to you all to have that on for consideration on April 6?
Robert L. Valentine W1: Let me check with someone.
Mayor
Stewart: Well, I am going to support it guys and I want your
support and that Resolution will help us. I think any questions
need to be answered before we get to the April 6th meeting because
there is not a catalogue of answers there so any questions please ask.
Sandra
Tunnell: When you talked to Stow and all of these other groups
that have already done it, what problems are they concerned with or
issues are they having?
Mark Burgess: I will say, some of
the typical problems, location on where it is to be housed was one of
them that they discussed and settled in the Stow area for that; the
procedures; the fire procedures went fairly smooth, it was the police
procedures that they ran into some problems. Different jurisdictions do
different things. The fire parts of it kind of blended easier
because one, we don’t have the radio traffic police do and the
jurisdictional issues because like in our case we can go to anything on
Baney Road and we know we cover it. Police, they have to be in
the city and the Sheriff has to go into the county and if you look at
that jigsaw puzzle, those are issues that need to be addressed on how
they respond and all of those types of things. The oversight, how
it is going to be governed, how this group was going to be governed.
Sandra Tunnell: So basically political things are the problem?
Mark
Burgess: Yes, but I can’t say that because all you guys are
elected. Those are the things and they work through them and that
is one of the things we have copies of their agreements so that we
aren’t inventing the wheel here. They have given us MECC.
The people at MECC have been extremely helpful. They have offered
to come up. They are willing to talk to Council. They are
willing for us to take a carload down to show the system. The
same way with Stow. Stow was very happy with what they are
doing. We can go up and see them and I am guessing the Red Center
is the same way. These people are proud of their facilities and
their capabilities so they are willing to show it off. They also
know the value of it. So they are willing to help us so those
political things, they have been through some of them. They have
some sample agreements that we can work with to minimize some of those.
Robert L. Valentine W1: What was the determining
factor for instance of these areas that we have as far as locations are
concerned.
Mark Burgess: It was appropriate for what they
decided to do. MECC moved from one of the township fire
departments and they ended renting a building on the second floor that
the builder would customize it to what their needs were and so it was a
mile away from it and it just fit. They found the builder, the
cost was right and they could do it. Those are all the
issues. I don’t think there is one answer.
Rick Anderson: Centralization is, I won’t say out the window but it is not near the determining factor as what it was.
Mark Burgess: We don’t need all of the wires.
Mayor
Stewart: This isn’t for newspaper information but compare the
calls that bulk of us make for service; we don’t know where we are
calling. My point is, location is not nearly as critical as it
could have been just a few short years ago.
Sandra
Tunnell: Well this right now is on dispatch isn’t it? On
radio. That is the call volume that would be typically happening
on to that is what we heard in the background?
Mayor Stewart: Probably. Well I am not getting some of the Sheriff or some of the county information.
Mark
Burgess: Please feel free to call either or any of us if you have
questions because this is something we feel strongly about. We
put a lot of time and effort into this and we see it as a step into the
future. It is better for our community. We can serve the
public better going this route. It is not that we are doing badly
now, we just want to improve and give the public better service and
this is one method we can do it. If we can control cost, we need
to do that. We need to be good stewards of the taxpayer’s money.
Sandra Tunnell: What happens if we do not get the grant?
Mark
Burgess: That is one of the phases we are going to look at.
We are going to take both avenues. We are going to take one that
okay if we get the grant this is what we will do and the other avenue
is, if we don’t get the grant, what steps do we need to take and how do
we fund that, how do we do that?
Sandra Tunnell: Does that push the timeline up?
Mark
Burgess: It could. We form committees. We met last
week over in Wooster and we go over again tomorrow morning. We
have some basic committees set up to start doing this legwork and to
come up with those plans. Kind of delegation of work, divisional
work. To get this going so we can answer those questions. I am
sure we are going to run into some more questions. The nice thing is we
have the Cleveland State Study, We have MECC, we have Stow, we have the
Red Center. We can go ask questions.
Sandra Tunnell: So you need a letter from us. Do Wooster and Wayne have a letter?
Mark Burgess: They are working on their side of it.
Mayor
Stewart: Are they not working at it as an Administrative issue
right now? They are not going to Council. I don’t believe in
that.
Mark Burgess: We discussed that at the meeting. I like our way better.
Mayor
Stewart: I can be very straight, you know where I stand. I
am asking for your support but the opportunity is up to you guys.
Robert L. Valentine W1: Well, I think a lot of questions are going to come after if we get the grant.
Mayor Stewart: Once we start the process in earnest, the questions will outweigh the answers for a long time.
Mark
Burgess: We have good people. The conversations with
Wooster and Orville and the other departments and agencies that are
interested have been candid. All of those questions about
location, cost. Cost allocation will be broke down two different
ways. Law enforcement will be based on population and Fire and
EMS will be based on run volume because of the difference in the way we
operate. We have worked through that. We have talked about
that. That is how some of the other places are doing it and it
has been agreeable so that the politics part is one step in the right
direction. That is how we develop some of our cost. Once we
come up with those, we can tell another fire department okay, we can
dispatch for you for x number of dollars a call. Then they
can go back and figure out how much is this going to cost. Is it a cost
savings and we want to join you. The same way with the
police. We can say that for your population that you cover, it is
going to cost you this much.
Mayor Stewart: You guys actually put a worksheet together on that?
Mark Burgess: We have a worksheet.
Robert L. Valentine W1: This might be a loaded question but how do the unions feel about this?
Mark
Burgess: That is one of the things we are going to address.
This is going to be a new entity. That is going to be one of the
considerations that we are going to talk about because it is going to
impact somebody.
Rick Anderson: I think it should be noted
too that each one of these places that we have visited, arrived at
where they are at, in different manners and they each have a different
way of doing it. The Red Center, for instance is its own
agency. They are employees of the Red Center. They are not
an employee of any political subdivision where as MECC I believe is a
township entity. There are different ways of doing it.
Mayor
Stewart: The Mayor of Wooster and I met here in this office and
had lunch and I think he and I are on a very common thread. It is
a matter of improving service, utilization of technology and best
utilization of resources that we have.
Questions or comments?
Motion to move to adjournment of Work Session by Stephen Stuart, moved by Sandra Tunnell, seconded by Robert L. Valentine W1:
Ayes: Ruth Detrow, Sandra Tunnell, Stephen Stuart, Robert L. Valentine W1.
Adjournment at 4:45 p.m.
Submitted by
Valarie F. Bishoff
Clerk of Council