PUBLIC SAFETY COMMITTEE
Tuesday, October 15, 2013
Randy Preston, Chairperson
Gerald Morrow, Vice-Chairperson
Chairman Preston called this Public Safety Committee Meeting to order at 10:05 a.m. with the following Supervisors in attendance: Margaret Bartley, David Blades, Sharon Boisen, Daniel Connell, Randy Douglas, Charles Harrington, Debra Malaney, Michael Marnell, Sue Montgomery-Corey, Ronald Moore, Gerald Morrow Roby Politi, Randy Preston, Thomas Scozzafava and Charles Whitson, Jr. William Ferebee had been previously excused. George Canon and Ed Hatch were absent.
Department Heads present were: Juliann Beatty, Brandon Boutelle, Judy Garrison, Daniel Palmer and Mark Whitney. Richard Cutting and Wayne Taylor had been previously excused.
Also present: Mike Blaise.
News Media: Jessica Collier – Adirondack Enterprise and Lohr McKinstry - Press Republican.
PRESTON: I will call this Public Safety Committee to order. Mr. Ferebee is not with us this morning. Board of Elections – Mr. Whitney do you have anything to report?
WHITNEY: I have nothing to report at this time.
PRESTON: Any questions for the Board of Elections? Thank you Mr. Whitney.
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Next on the agenda was County Sealer. Wayne Taylor was previously excused.
PRESTON: County Sealer, Wayne Taylor has asked to be excused.
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Next on the agenda was Emergency Services, Mike Blaise.
BLAISE: I have nothing to report.
PRESTON: Okay Mike does anyone have any questions for Emergency Services?
DOUGLAS: Just on Emergency Services Dan can you let the APA know where we are at with the radio at this point with the three areas? They had reached out to me and Mr. Preston last week about where we are at, standing with the towers and I just gave it to Dan to answer.
PRESTON: Very good. Mr. Harrington did you have something?
HARRINGTON: Not at this time.
MARNELL: I’m looking for ideas. Everybody is having the same problem and I’m sure they are, in towns with lack of membership in EMS and Fire Departments and is there any incentives or can there be incentives?
PRESTON: There is a $200.00 exemption on your income tax, New York State a lot of people don’t even file for and the other thing is the thing that is driving the train that has been driving it forever we have the Department of Health and Office of Fire and Prevention and Control that are legislating through regulation so they are coming out with these regulations that the volunteers just can’t keep up with any more and that’s what is driving them right out the door. And it’s a runaway train and it is you take a look at any of these and it’s a total runaway train. What it used to be to be a EMT and now what the hours are are astonishing, what the costs are to become one are astonishing, the same with the firemen I mean, we have been through this before the fire fighter 1 use to be 39 hours and now it’s 80 I mean they have doubled it. They are basically making it impossible for this to happen which at the end of the day it’s going to end up on the property tax and then they are going to say there’s a 2% cap and all this because people have had enough but they are the ones driving the train but nothing has ever been done it’s actually just continually getting worse. We were talking earlier about the Department of Health I mean the EMT program is just totally a runaway train the same with the firefighting training I mean, the mandates are just unbelievable and we have nowhere to turn but the property tax and so as everyone and hopefully I live a few more years in this room we’re going to have a paid ambulance service in one form or another before we die. We are going to be heading next to a paid fire department and hang on when that happens.
MARNELL: I can see if it goes the way it is in two years we’ll be looking to a paid EMS and possibly a fire district.
PRESTON: Oh it’s coming.
MARNELL: Ambulances they are out every day, sometimes twice, sometimes three times and you are running the squad with a limited number of people but if we don’t do something if we wait, we are going to paying a full time personnel.
PRESTON: Oh it’s very much going to happen. Patty did you want to come up? Please by all means.
BASHAW: I had no intention to stay for this meeting but as the EMS Coordinator for the county I’ve have been down to your folks. I’ve been down there a couple times to help them brainstorm an idea to help come up with a plan for Crown Point. You are going to see this like Randy is saying, you are going to see this across the whole county. What I would really stress to the supervisors is I mean you really need to be thinking outside of the box as to how you come up with a plan for your different towns it will be individual for each town. My agency thankfully we have a paid person during the day and then we have volunteers at night. I’m still having to pay people for the weekends because people are working two or three jobs, they have kids I mean it’s just on and on. The hours have gone from 110 hours for the EMT class up to 160, 170 just in this past year. I can’t speak for the fire department side but I would be more than happy to come to anybody’s town or speak with you individually but this is a time to really be looking. A lot of agencies like Ausable Forks for an example they are pretty much covered 24/7 now but they are doing sometimes two calls at once and it really also comes back to again, they are letting people out of the hospital sooner, our aging population particularly our 75 to 85 has boomed, we’ve had an increase of 200 people just in this one year for our unduplicated contacts so again, it’s coming back down to the locals just like everything else that coming down these days.
MONTGOMERY-COREY: I’m not on the committee but I have some comments about this. The first thing is that Patty is right the senior population is definitely had an impact on the EMS service. I know that in my town I think I remember the number 112 as of the end of August, mid-September for this year we’re up above where we were last year and we were up last year above where we were the year before and virtually because of some of the health issues that folks are facing virtually almost all of our calls are ALS calls which requires yet another level of care and we have very few ALS techs in town. I happen to married to one so I know how many calls they go out on I’m real familiar with that.
The paid thing is something that we are all looking at. One of the barriers to that that places like Minerva is looking at is that our EMS is tied to our fire department they are one organization because they are one organization the State of New York has a law on the books that says that a joint organization can’t bill for ambulance calls that’s a law that needs to be changed. Senator Little has worked on that and that’s something that over the next year I think we should take up as part of our legislative package so if we could do that I would really appreciate it. I see both sides of it because in addition to my husband being an ALS tech in Minerva he’s also a paid EMT in other places and so I see that side of it too. I think ultimately we’re probably all going to end up there even though we’re very proud of the fact that we in Minerva have a volunteer service basically if somebody takes a ride in the ambulance with us they don’t get billed for it and in our community we have a lot of lower income people and that becomes very important.
BASHAW: And to add to that we are so rural because I work every other weekend for Newcomb, we are so rural that some of those calls are taking three, four hours so being gone most of the day is kind of an issue too.
MONTGOMERY-COREY: Yeah our calls are almost all three plus hours.
BASHAW: Right that really is the real need for those ALS techs and they go almost a full year in training now.
DOUGLAS: Yes we went to paid service last year which included volunteers in Ausable Forks it covers all Ausable Forks, Jay, Upper Jay the whole town and the Town of Black Brook but it’s a constant juggling act our 2% tax cap is $42,000. I worked on the budget last night again with my budget officer ambulance is looking for a $43,000 increase to help offset cost of the five employees so if I accept that we are already over the tax cap before I even do anything with my own budget. It’s a juggling act. We supported them in a paid service because there was some concerns about some drop calls at some different times of the day and of course we are in this business for public safety, it’s got to come first so we made that happen and worked with them on their budget, with our budget to make things happen. I don’t know what I’m going to do this year. We’re going to come in under the tax cap one way or another. We are going to make that happen but it’s a juggling act. It really is. In the end I think Randy is right I think everybody is going to end up with a paid service. Our fire department numbers are high we thank God for that. We do have very active fire departments and the volunteer service in the ambulance squad but it’s a constant juggling act and I think we are all going to be faced with it so it’s a financial situation that can have an impact on your town budget. We are not an ambulance district we contract with them so it can have an issue. It might be time for us an ambulance district? I don’t know but it is an issue that we are going to continually face. There is no short answer to this. Thank you.
PRESTON: Any other questions or comments?
SCOZZAFAVA: It is as you pointed out Mr. Chairman, it is going to be a continuous problem. It is a problem in my community and probably every community and with the Mutual Aid System that we do have in place I know that there is a lot of times that you even come to Moriah to help out.
BASHAW: Yes.
SCOZZAFAVA: I don’t know if it’s legally possible but we should think about forming a county wide district for health care for that, for the emergency services, the ambulance services.
BASHAW: Warren County is looking to do that as well.
SCOZZAFAVA: I mean I think that makes the most sense and that spreads the cost out among everyone and then you are not locked into these boundaries and so on and then the county can bill back insurance and so on.
BASHAW: One of the problems is my CON another CON, covers Etown and Lewis. If I routinely go to another town for coverage like to expand to Westport maybe, for example not that we would do that but I would have to reapply for my CON which costs you know, major dollars you know like $8,000.00 to do that.
SCOZZAFAVA: I’m sure there would be, you know I think it’s something we need to explore and look into. I mean right now we are actually in violation if the Comptroller and wanted to come in and really pick apart what we do I mean, we support a good portion of our ambulance squad as Randy does through a contract you know, we’re going into other towns the people of Moriah are paying for that services but if somebody in Crown Point needs an ambulance and there’s no one available we go. I don’t know I just think a county wide district may make some sense.
BARTLEY: One of the things I noticed and I feel for the various supervisors like myself who happen to have the Interstate running through their town and so many of our calls come from accidents not our residents but from people on the Interstate and I’m sitting here thinking how in the heck can we make this I mean, 1100 people in my town and 1300 people in Lewis are taking care of the world that is going through 87 between Montreal and New York City and it’s all falling on our backs. Now if they have insurance we can bill them but I’m sitting here thinking I wonder if we could pass a surtax on all the speeders that come into our court for ambulance service. You know like an ambulance penalty. If you get speeding because you are going to end up calling us if you have a wreck we can add a little tax on there for the speeders on 87? I don’t know if it’s legal but it would be nice. I mean, somehow we, the people living here we take care of our people but to sit there and think that we have to provide this service to the world because of I-87 really bothers me.
BASHAW: That and then Keene and Keene Valley the hikers for an example it goes on and on.
BARTLEY: Don’t they get a bill if they get lost and they get rescued?
BASHAW: I don’t know.
WHITSON: On behalf of the Emergency Rescue Units that are tied together with the fire departments, we’ve had this same problem up in Saranac Lake where as our billing by the rescue departments to the towns or the surrounding counties that Saranac Lake provides service to the only way that we were able to bill it out was by separating the fire department and the rescue. At this point in time we are in our third year of doing this out of a five year time element. This year we have shown or the rescue department has shown that we are kind of reaching the peak where the billing process stands a good chance of being able to handle the total dollar cost to operate the rescue department. Down the road in the next two years we feel as though it will be fully funding by billing out for their and what have you to the individuals. We had the same problem as Margaret just suggested as far as people just passing through and that has definitely helped so there is quite a bit of work that we’re having to perform in the changeover okay, to work with Saranac Lake but I feel after the end of the five years it will be a very prosperous and smart move on everyone’s part
PRESTON: Yes there is actually Patty correct me if I’m wrong, not that I want to get into a long dragged out, to my knowledge there is three ways to do this, form an ambulance district, private corporation or in Wilmington we’ve turned around and the fire district because we are combined it’s like Minerva the fire district turned their certificate of need over to the town the town holds the certificate of need, the town can bill. We turn around and contract with the fire district for service and in my opinion that was the least intrusive as far as forming another bureaucracy and another taxing entity so we’ve done that, we’re on about year three, between three and three and a half years I think since we’ve done it and it’s worked extremely well for us.
BASHAW: Yeah those are municipal CON’s. The one thing I’m kind of stunned but that’s good for you guys because we just had a budget meeting and I’ll be real quick, it’s always you guys bill, you guys bill, yeah we bill but with our benefit package and the wage it barely just I mean, it covers our paid person and our per diem people it doesn’t cover the operational cost everybody thinks oh, we are rolling in money well, that’s not the case. It does cover our paid individuals and our per diem but not the operation side like all of our insurances and stuff.
WHITSON: It’s still a work in progress, don’t get me wrong it’s very hard because we are totally switching from part A to part B and there’s that process that we have to go through with the billing and what have you but I do feel in another two years by the time we reach that five year limit things will be a lot better than what they are right now.
BASHAW: That’s awesome.
BLADES: Okay pet peeve time. I sit in the window right alongside the fire department in Lewis and whenever the siren goes off they empty their garage, often times they are back ten, fifteen minutes later because they have been sent to the Northway for whatever. We need to tighten that concern up property damage accidents on the Northway should not empty my fire department out.
BASHAW: As far as the dispatch side goes and Mike can correct me if I’m wrong but it has gotten better with the State Police sitting in the same dispatch center as our dispatchers. There is nothing like getting up at 1:00 in the morning to go out and find nobody out on the Northway because somebody has called on their cell phone there is a car off the road, then they don’t stop, so they don’t know if there is any injuries well, when in doubt you send them out so we go out there. What happens now in a lot of our cases, I can’t speak for the fire side is we’ll by the time we get out the door and almost to the Northway either end the State Police are usually on scene saying property damage only go ahead and cancel the EMS and fire so, we do go out there a lot of times I think it was 31 I think refusals I think I showed you? Thirty-one refusals probably all those are off the Northway or most of them. It has gone down some but you are right heading out there particularly as bad as those roads are with all the traffic out there these days it would be awesome if we didn’t have to go out there.
CONNELL: I’ve been a volunteer fireman for over 40 years and my concern is everything that we are talking about today we are going to be talking about firemen in another couple of years because for a young person male or female to go through just the basic training to become a volunteer fire person anymore is almost impossible and I don’t know where these folks are going to come from? Because they are giving up basically a year of their life to go to the training to be a basic fire volunteer fire person and some of this training, I’m sorry but it’s common sense you know, they can start doing some online things or some other ways to do it rather than to travel 50 miles to go to a two hour class for a year. Things have to change or we are going to have these same discussions going to be about the basic volunteer fire people.
PALMER: You are absolutely correct. We could talk about this for the next four or five hours.
MONTGOMERY-COREY: I just want to leave a little tiny bit of good news. The Town of Minerva is really pleased to announce that we have a brand new fire fighter who is in fact a younger person and I’m incredible proud of Brandon Dunbar for completing the training. I’m hoping that he will inspire some of his friends to do the same.
BASHAW: One of the things that we are doing I’m sorry, I’m teaching the ANT class that starts next week and we are actually beaming that to Malone’s public safety building so we are picking up nine people from that county. We talked about ALS there is not a lot of ALS at all in Franklin county so we are thinking outside the box. We are trying to do education but you’re right it’s a lot to be done.
PRESTON: Yes, one thing that I will just chime and then we’ll move on what is Patty said about thinking outside of the box. You need to do that and she probably has some ideas and actually I have a few, it doesn’t solve the problem of the State mandates but there is different avenues that you can look at to make it a little less painful on the property tax. Thanks Patty.
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Next on the agenda was the Sheriff’s Office. Richard Cutting was previously excused.
PRESTON: The Sheriff is not with us but I do believe we have a resolution there. Authorizing an increase of revenues and appropriations by $22.11 for recovery of inmate postage.
RESOLUTION AUTHORIZING A BUDGET AMENDMENT IN THE SHERIFF’S OFFICE INCREASING REVENUES AND APPROPRIATIONS BY $22.11 FOR RECOVERY OF INMATE POSTAGE.
This was offered by Mr. Moore, seconded by Mr. Whitson.
PRESTON: Any discussion? All in favor, opposed – so carried.
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Next on the agenda was the District Attorney, Kristy Sprague.
PRESTON: District Attorney, Kristy Sprague anything to report?
SPRAGUE: I have no report unless anyone has any questions?
PRESTON: Anyone have any questions for the District Attorney?
DOUGLAS: Just a comment I want to congratulate her on the success of the overwhelming, lot of paperwork I’m sure, a lot of investigative work to come to a conclusion the murder trial and to have a conviction of all three. Congratulations it was a great job.
PRESTON: Yes. I would echo that.
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Next on the agenda was the Probation Department with Julie Beatty.
PRESTON: Anything to report?
BEATTY: I have nothing new to report. I have submitted a report unless you have questions of me?
PRESTON: Julie has given us a report. Does anyone have any questions for Probation? Thank you Julie.
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Next on the agenda was the Public Defender Brandon Boutelle reporting as follows:
BOUTELLE: Good morning everyone.
PRESTON: Good morning.
BOUTELLE: We have a resolution authorizing the Public Defender’s office to accept an indigent legal service grant in the amount of $95,748.00 over a three year period and authorizing the execution of the contract with the New York State Office of Indigent Legal Services.
RESOLUTION AUTHORIZING THE PUBLIC DEFENDER’S OFFICE TO ACCEPT AND EXECUTE A CONTRACT WITH THE NEW YORK STATE OFFICE OF INDIGENT LEGAL SERVICES OVER A THREE YEAR PERIOD, IN THE AMOUNT OF $95,748.00 FOR AN INDIGENT LEGAL SERVICES GRANT.
This was offered by Mr. Moore, seconded by Mr. Morrow.
PRESTON: Any discussion? If not, all in favor – opposed, so carried. Anything else Brandon?
BOUTELLE: This morning we’ve opened 686 cases it’s been quite a busy year. On top of that two homicide cases I know the DA’s office has prosecuted five plus. The year 2012 to 2013 is like our five hundred year storm of criminal law here it’s very odd to have this many homicides within a year. I think before the last homicide was five years ago so and also the complicating factor the one from Keeseville had three co-defendants. We couldn’t represent all three of them. We took the worse one I guess, if you want to call it that so the other two were assigned out by the Judge. I think the Assigned Counsel bills for this year are probably going to be a little more than you want but it’s one of these things it’s probably impossible to budget for or anticipate having a homicide with three co-defendants but we’ve done our best to absorb it. The DA’s office has done their best in prosecuting all of them. I think we are able to stay within our same budget footprint for the year so luckily we’re able to absorb that but we are soldiering on and respect the last conversation about the EMT’s and fire department. Our deputy Public Defender Bill Tansey I think is volunteering with the Keene Fire Department and he tells me all the time about this 80 hour course he has to take but there is another young person coming in to volunteer in another aspect of public safety.
PRESTON: Any other questions?
DOUGLAS: Yes just a comment I had the privilege of visiting with Brandon and his entire staff with Vice-Chairman Ferebee last Monday as we are doing our department head visits. I was amazed how much you do with your staff and how much work and how much overwhelming it has been on you over the last couple of months but I want to say again we are very fortunate to have the DA and Public Defender that we have in this county and I say that wholeheartedly. I have visited both your offices and I was amazed with the amount of work you do. Your staff you both have dedicated staff and you are both to be congratulated and I mean that. I don’t know how you do it with the case load and I will say that Brandon has shared some ideas about some cost saving measures that I will be getting with Mr. Palmer on to see if we can come up with some ideas and see if we can move forward with them but Brandon thank you for all you do.
BOUTELLE: Thank you.
PRESTON: Anything else for Mr. Boutelle? If not, thank you Brandon.
Forestry we have no report. Is there anything else to come before this committee? If not, we stand adjourned.
As there was no further business to come before this Public Safety committee it was adjourned at 10:30 a.m.
Respectfully submitted,
Judy Garrison, Clerk
Board of Supervisors