Washington Contract Firefighters Association
Special Board Meeting (Zoom) – March 28, 2020
Our first Zoom meeting was called to order at 1008 hours by President Kevin Curfman. Saul Labanasukas, Dave Rains, Todd Grave and Danielle Sims present.
This meeting is to discuss training guidelines from R-6 due to the Corona Virus pandemic.
Around March 11th the WCFA made the decision to cancel the remaining classes in March and to re-assess at the end of the month to see what our next steps would be. On March 23rd Washington State Governor, Jay Inslee ordered everyone to stay at home with no groups being allowed to gather.
On March 26th R-6 sent an email out with some guidelines on how to proceed with training while keeping everyone safe and healthy.
- RT-130 for 2019 would be extended to 12/31/20.
- WCFT would be extended but all employees needing WCFT would need to complete a health screening.
What does this look like for us as an association and how will we implement it? First off, we need to cancel the classes we have scheduled up to April 15th and mark the rest of April pending. We will look at things as it gets closer and see if the situation improves or we need to cancel more.
We discussed taking advantage of online training options. For new FFT2 we will use the current NWCG and FEMA training already available here https://www.nwcg.gov/publications/training-courses/operations, https://training.fema.gov/is/. If for some reason the NWCG site is overwhelmed and unable to work for this training, we with decide what other options would work such as providing small classes for those that cannot do the training online.
Dave Rains said he could do field days in June or as soon as we can to get the students training complete. There would be other instructors that could do them as well. Classes may need to be small. Danielle offered her assistance as tech support to students who needed help.
We also discussed new RT-130 only students (equipment, drivers, etc.…) and FFT2 that haven’t taken a refresher. We are going to use last year’s refresher and update the current events with this year’s refresher information. This way we can preserve the refresher we put together for this year since most students will not see it. R-6 recommendation was to use technology to hold these classes to get those students trained. We feel that Zoom video conferencing will work well for this. RT130 students would need to go to their closest instructor or training coordinator to do the required shelter deployment. Each instructor has enough shelters that they could sanitize them between uses.
For students who took RT-130 last year R-6 recommends that students do a “self-study” of important topics and the shelter video to prepare students for this season. Todd Graves asked if an email with links to needed videos could be put together and sent to members who could then send them out to their employees. Danielle will put this together as soon as possible.
For students who did a WCFT last year R-6 is only requiring that they do a new health screening to ensure they are fit for duty. There were several forms included in the R-6 guidelines. Kevin will choose the simplest one and it will be sent out to members and put on the website under Member’s Resources. Todd felt it was important to have everyone use the same form, so we don’t get so many different ones coming in for inspection.
Another discussion was about how the cards will be done. R-6 guideline is to extend RT-130 to 12/31/20. Our current system in the database only shows a refresher and WCFT for the current year. Our database tech said he can make an adjustment, so the cards say something like 2019 extended or 2019-2020.
Because all employees are required to have a health screening, we feel it’s important to continue with inspections for returning employees. The health screening would be sent to our records inspector along with other needed items, like shift tickets to update currency or move to red dot. This would provide everyone with a card signed in 2020 by the inspector. Todd Graves said that this step keeps us on standard with the professionalism that the WCFA has grown to be known for.
We hope to be back online in a couple of months or hopefully sooner. Other classes like S-212, S-131, S-290 and S-230 will be offered if there is a way.
Todd Graves asked Kevin if he would be willing to stay on as a paid consultant or remain as president to get us through this crisis. Kevin said he had planned on staying on to help, but he didn’t want to be bound to the position. He has taken a new position that will start in the fall and he doesn’t want to take on too much.
Kevin brought up the idea of an Executive Director position. They asked Danielle if she would be interested in this position. Some discussion followed about duties and responsibilities. The idea is to free up a new president from handling some responsibilities that the ED could do. ED would have full support of the board. Saul and Dave agreed that we need to continue to discuss this and bring it to the spring or fall meeting depending on when we can meet again. Dave said we need to have a clear job description so we would know what the job entails.
Todd Graves said we should be thinking about the future of the WCFA in case Danielle became unavailable or unable to continue in her job. They suggested an assistant to learn her job. More discussion followed; nothing was decided.
Danielle asked Kevin how we would keep the database and website up in his absence since his son is our web admin. Kevin said he had been talking to Dan Curfman about this and he expects to do this for a long time and would be in direct contact with us, mostly Danielle. Kevin said that there are several things that Dan is working on so that we could do more ourselves. Danielle will be briefed on how to do this.
Todd brought up the idea for board members to be paid $300 and the Vice President paid $500 per year if they attend at least 2 meetings per year. This can be online or in person and would be paid at the end of the year before 12/31 to be counted for that year. Discussion followed and Todd made a motion for this, Saul seconded, motion passed.
Because of the change in our training this year Danielle is going to have a considerable drop in her hours. Saul suggested that we average her last two years and pay her a salary each month so she will not suffer because of this crisis. They settled on $2000 per month retro-active to January. Since Danielle has already been paid for Jan, and Feb check is pending, she will submit a new invoice to Kevin for the addition dollars to add up to $2000 per month. Saul motioned to approve this payment option for Danielle, Dave seconded, motion passed. Danielle wants to still track her hours for reference and to be sure she is not working considerably less or more than we are paying her for.
Saul jested that Todd would be our next president. Todd feels that with his current life responsibilities he could act as president and would accept a nomination. He made comments about how much things have changed for the good since he was president years ago. He felt the current leadership has made the WCFA a smooth running organization that would be easy to manage.
Todd asked if the minutes from the meeting could be written up for approval right away so it could be approved before it was sent out to the membership. All agreed and Danielle will get right on it after the meeting.
Kevin reviewed findings about our current tax status. We found, by accident a couple of months ago, that our Federal tax status as exempt has never been filed. We have been a non-profit corporation with the State of Washington since 1998, but former President Brent Lewis never completed the IRS non-profit 501(c)6 status for our association. Kevin called the IRS and they told him that since we have been acting as a non-profit all these years, we just need to file for the exempt status and then file 22 years of exempt 990 returns. Danielle and Kevin will be working together to get this resolved.
Todd asked what our account balances are. Checking: $36,110.83, Savings: $60,068.00.
Meeting adjourned 1215