The meeting was called to order by President Todd Graves at 1205.
President Todd Graves, Secretary Danielle Sims, VP Saul Labanauskas and board members, Greg Bailey, Tim Logozzo, Reed Gracie, Dave Rains were all present. Will Judkins will be joining later.
The minutes from the last meeting were approved without reading them because all board members had received a copy to read before the meeting. Motion to accept the minutes by Saul Labanauskas, seconded by Greg Bailey. All approved
The Treasurer’s report was presented by Danielle Sims. Account balances are as follows: Checking $37,508, Savings $60,078. The Profit and Loss report was reviewed. Income from all sources for Jan 2021 – October 30, 2021, was $90.473. Expenses for the same period were $60,513. Our net profit is $29,960. Motion to approve the Treasurer’s report by Greg Bailey, seconded by Saul Labanauskas. All approved
The following Training Committee topics were discussed:
Training updates and concerns for the coming year. NWCG shared guidelines that are similar to last season. Small classes, masks, have Zoom classes if possible. President Graves said he hoped area facilities would open up so he would not have to have classes at his shop. Last season we had online students be responsible to get a shelter deployment from an agency or one of our instructors. Danielle created a form and shared that the process had worked well, we will continue to implement this process for next season.
We discussed raising the Saw Class to the same price as the other classes we raised last year. In this same discussion Danielle said with the net profit this year she would like to see the instructors get a raise. Discussion followed to be sure the class fees would keep up with the raise. A motion to approve the saw class fee to $150 and raise for instructors to $30 per hour was made by Saul Labanauskas and seconded by Dave Rains. All approved.
Jake Burkhart joined the meeting in progress because he is unable to attend the later General Meeting. Being the chair of the PAC, he shared updates from what he has learned since our last meeting. There had been discussion about whether we have a contract or agreement. The Forest Service says we have an agreement but it’s irrelevant because we get federal funding. Jake says we are caught in the middle because Department of Labor says we have a Blanket Purchase Agreement with net zero. DOL says they see significant problems with this. It needs to be brought to the federal government. Discussion about getting a renewal on the Farm Labor License followed. Jake said the office in San Francisco is overwhelmed with new applicants that are realizing they need to be compliant. We need to be in touch with our Senators and Representatives because of this. Todd said he would be in touch with Jake to make a plan. Jake said we might need to split this into two committees, Federal and State. Jake said our state representatives don’t realize we have a private sector. We need to let them know we are available.
Back to the Training Committee topics:
Danielle asked the board to send her ideas for the next RT-130. We also discussed a problem Danielle has been seeing while inspecting records. Some contractors are sending in records for Fire Department training that the new hire doesn’t seem to have an affiliation with the FD. After much discussion we confirmed that only RT-130 training can be done at FD for employees that work for their departments and are returning to work for the contractor. New hires records can be brought over from a department if they show that they were part of the department for their training and not just using the department for training. We need to share this with the members so they will ask first and not waste time and money following the wrong process.
Old Business:
At our last meeting we discussed creating a process to help employees move to another employer in the database. Danielle created a form as a starting place and shared it with the board. After much discussion we are still undecided if there is a way to implement this. We will bring it to the membership and see what they say.
Danielle shared that after researching and filing 990-N forms from 2007-2020 and sending in an application to get our Determination of Non-Profit Status that we got our Determination letter in August. After talking with the IRS, they said we didn’t need to file all the back forms since the statutes of limitation has long past on those. However, on Friday, October 22nd, Danielle got 8 letters from the IRS saying we had penalties for filing those years late that totaled about $22,000. The next week she was able to reach the IRS and found out that we needed to send a letter explaining what we had been told about not having to file the back forms and we would most likely have the penalties removed. IRS said they are very busy, and it could take a while to hear back. The letter was sent to IRS and now we will wait for their reply.
We have been talking about reviewing and/or updating the WCFA By-laws for several years now. It was agreed that we would send a reminder to the board and have this done by the spring meeting.
We have also been working on Professionalism and Code of Ethics for the same amount of time. Todd sent this to the board members prior to the meeting and had received some back. He plans to have this updated and sent to the membership by the end of this year. After much discussion all concurred it is important that we need to have ethical behavior on fires.
We went over committee reports from PAC, Medical Services Committee and Legal Advisory. We confirmed that Jake Burkhart is the current chair of the PAC, Todd Graves is the Medical Services chair and Saul Labanauskas is the Legal Advisory chair. Todd has contacted Wayne Walker of Lifeline Ambulance to see if he would be willing to take over chair of the Medical Services committee.
PAC was updated earlier with chair Jake Burkhart. Todd sent questions from an earlier Medical Services questionnaire to have those members weigh in. Will Judkins, a member of this committee, says after conversations with the CO’s he doesn’t see this getting any easier. The Legal Advisory Committee has not had any action. Saul had to leave the meeting earlier and Todd said he would ask Saul to look into a lawyer to review our by-laws. A discussion was started on whether we should have a lawyer on retainer. After the discussion it was decided that with our use of one just getting one as needed would be sufficient.
Todd has recently attended a Fire Defense Committee meeting. Todd shared that the State Patrol is in charge of the Fire Marshall. The new guy at the State Patrol doesn’t have fire experience. FDC meets to update the Mayor and Fire Marshalls office. FDC says the COLA is going up 5-6%. They set their rates for State Fire Marshall by looking in VIPR for high and low bids. They use private rates to set their rates. Discussion followed. State Mob cost is high because of pay rates at departments. REM’s are being added to State Mob. State fire services are going to be listed in VIPR. This is a conflict of state against private industries. Lack of vaccination records for fire personnel could become a problem. Washington State makes up 25%-50% of fire personnel. Vaccination issue is a great concern to FDC.
We discussed if DPL is using closest resources. Most feel that they have been. Todd noted that the DNR will not be sending state crews out of state for the foreseeable future.
New Business:
Running short of time, we decided to discuss last fire season and COVID-19’s future on contract fires. It was noted that vaccination status may be part of the solicitation and part of records inspections.
We have three applications for new members. We have two new members who have responded with the appropriate documents. We will bring this to the membership for a vote.
We have election of officers that should have been done in the spring, but we were not able to meet. Saul Labanauskas is up for VP 2019-2021, one year position. Todd asked him if he would accept a nomination in his absence and he said yes. Greg Bailey is up for EB #1, 2018-2021, three-year position. This will be brought to the membership for a vote.
We discussed paying the president. Should it be set to a lower rate and work up to the previous presidents pay. It was decided that it should start at the current rate of $6000 annually if we could afford it. We owe the president for 2020-2021 that should have been paid in the spring. Motion to pay President Graves made by Greg Bailey, seconded by Dave Rains, all approved. Todd was grateful and would like to be paid by the end of the year.
Other new business is to reimburse President Graves for attending NWSA Conference in Reno this December. We had previously sent a board member to, but since we are still recovering financially, we plan to see where we are next fall and possibly send one then.
Spring meeting date will most likely be mid-May.
Motion to adjourn meeting was made by Greg Bailey, seconded by Dave Rains. All approved.
Meeting adjourned at 1451