Fire District Monthly Meeting April 9, 2020

Fire District Monthly Meeting April 9, 2020

Board of Fire Commissioners of the Mendon Fire District
Monthly Meeting
April 9, 2020

Call to Order:
Ryan Wilsey: Calling our regular monthly meeting to order at 19:24.

Roll Call:
Art Morrell?

Art Morrell: Commissioner here.

Ryan Wilsey: Steve Shuler?

Steve Shuler: Yes sir, I am here.

Ryan Wilsey: John Shipe?

John Shipe: Commissioner here.

Ryan Wilsey: John McGinnis?

John McGinnis: Secretary here.

Ryan Wilsey: Dan Considine?

Dan Considine: Commissioner here.

Ryan Wilsey: Heidi Baumer?

Heidi Baumer: Treasurer present.

Ryan Wilsey: Peter Kester?

Peter Kester: Chief here.

Ryan Wilsey: William Fletcher?

William Fletcher: Board attorney here.

Ryan Wilsey: Lance Marchese?

Lance Marchese: I guess I am here, yeah.

Ryan Wilsey: That completes roll call.

Calendar and Request for Meeting Room:
John McGinnis: One received from Patty Marchese for May 23, if possible. She realizes it may not be possible. It is for a shower event.

Steve Shuler: Motion to approve.

John Shipe: Second.

Ryan Wilsey: All in favor? Opposed? Abstain?

Motion carries unanimously.

Ryan Wilsey: Any other calendar and requests for the meeting room?

John McGinnis: None received by the secretary.

Communications:
Ryan Wilsey: Any correspondence?

John McGinnis: Nothing was received by me.

Ryan Wilsey: OK.

Board of Directors’ Report:
Lance Marchese: Nothing essential to talk about so no Board of Directors’ report.

Chief’s Report:
Ryan Wilsey: Peter Kester do you have a chief’s report?

Peter Kester: I do. 60 calls year-to-date. No damage to any equipment, that I know of. Joe Roshenshin has been cleared from medical with some limitations. He is to respond to the scene and only do Fire Police.

As of right now, the Media May day training you approved last month is still on. They will wait until the 15th and if that gets canceled they will give us a full refund.

As most of you know or have seen in the news, the Health Department, CDC, and our medical director has recommended that we wear face coverings while out in public. We have had 45 masks donated to us yesterday. I am holding one up now. They are just a fabric mask with elastic ties that go over like that. They have all been washed and cleaned by Marilyn Armand. In the bag, there are washing instructions to wash your own.

I also have a memo typed up that will be sent out to the department later tonight that indicates that if anytime we are on a call, firefighters are expected to wear that mask. The only exception to that is if they are doing patient care which they should then remove the fabric mask and wear the medical grade mask N95 or the surgical mask. The other exception is if you need to wear your SCBA.

Any questions on that? OK. I have a copy for the Board. I will forward it to you John.

John McGinnis: OK.

Peter Kester: We received a donation from Bad Drip Labs and Nowave of 10 bottles of hand sanitizer that was through Senator Rich Funke. I have a letter for that.

I have one purchase request for the boots and a turnout gear. I will pull it up in a second. It is for 6 pairs of boots and 2 sets of turnout gear, total of $9741.77. It is through MES. Turnout gear is like what we have always purchased in the past. It is on the New York State contract number which is included on the purchase request. I have a signed copy that I left on Dale’s desk, I didn’t know how else to do it.

John McGinnis: Do you have a number on that purchase request Pete?

Peter Kester: I don’t have a number on it.

John McGinnis: Alright, no big deal.

John Shipe: Pete, did you say there is a copy on Dale’s desk?

Peter Kester: Yes.

John Shipe: He will assign the purchase number to it in the morning.

Peter Kester: The purchase price does cover the boots already delivered. I don’t know how he sent the boots before he sent the quote. I don’t know how that happened.

That is all I have.

Dan Considine: I make a motion to accept the Chief’s request for purchase of the turnout gear and boots.

John Shipe: Second that.

Ryan Wilsey: All in favor? Opposed? Abstain?

Motion carries unanimously.

William Fletcher: Question for the chief, which might be good to put in the record, Peter, who donated the masks?

Peter Kester: I forgot the name.

William Fletcher: They may like a little bit of publicity for it.

Peter Kester: Lisa at Sew Creations, she is actually from Fairport. When this happened, I reached out to the Ladies’ Auxiliary to see if any of them were able to make these for us. A couple people had some outlets. Marilyn Armand is the one who came up with this lady and actually got them the next day.

William Fletcher: Fantastic. I suggest that some kind of thank you go out to them.

John McGinnis: Peter, if you want to give me a copy or something and I can write her a letter and I would also send a letter into The Sentinel mentioning that we were donated this stuff by this particular party. That should cover thank you and recognition.

Peter Kester: I will send that to you John. I have one more question that may be for Bill. With everything going on, does our liability change with the carnival for our insurance?

William Fletcher: I think that it deserves a review of procedure for admission, particularly to the beer tent and so on. If this continues through the date of the carnival I think a complete review of process and sanitary procedure needs to be had before the carnival is held. I am not even sure you want to have the carnival, but that is a topic for discussion at some point.

Steve Shuler: I was on the phone with the Health Department today. I have a couple contacts but it’s looking like we are not going to be able to even get permits. I think the carnival is going to be postponed, though not officially, but as we are standing right now.

Peter Kester: If it is postponed, that answers my question.

Steve Shuler: That is the way it is looking right now.

Peter Kester: OK. Mr. Chairman, I will turn it back over to you. I have nothing further.

Approval of Minutes:
Ryan Wilsey: Did everyone have a chance to read the minutes from the last meeting?

Steve Shuler: Motion to approve as printed here.

Art Morrell: Second.

Ryan Wilsey: All in favor? Opposed? Abstain?

Motion carried to approve the minutes from the previous meeting.

Treasurer’s Report:
Heidi Baumer: The treasurer’s report I left it at the firehouse for individual review. Hopefully everyone had a chance to look and sign the documentation. The spreadsheet was also sent out via email to show what bills would be paid this month. I don’t know if you can share that on the screen Ryan.

It is on file. There were not too many bills this past month, so that’s a good thing.

One thing I would mention, for the First Bank Card, our Visa bills just came in. Various commissioners were to provide the receipts to Dale so I would put it out there, did everyone have a chance to review the bills and get their receipts to Dale?

John Shipe: I did.

Heidi Baumer: Here it is on the screen, thank you Ryan, the spreadsheet. John’s receipts are there. So we have John, Dan, Dale and Ryan had receipts. Dale’s receipts are obviously all there since he is preparing them. So Ryan and Dan just have receipts to supply.

I didn’t have anything else specific regarding the treasurer’s report. I think that we are in good shape as far as all our expenses are going right now.

Any questions or comments, input? Can everyone see the bills?

John Shipe: On the abstract I signed mine and receipts were given to Dale.

Lance Marchese: The bill for MJM is not correct. I don’t know where Dale is getting the $311 that we owe but I think the only thing that we owe is $120 for Ron Coyle.

Sierra Marchese: ______ should be paying just over $4000 and not just under it like he has.

Lance Marchese: He was not very pleasant with Patty trying to get the bill going and I don’t know where he is getting his numbers from. He has no mathematical calculations to show where he is getting the numbers, he’s just coming up with this $311 that the district will not pay.

Sierra Marchese: and we do have calculations.

Dan Considine: I did review those bills and his notation showed that the cards that were used for the website were not all yours, there were different firefighters’ cards that were used for your purchases.

Sierra Marchese: Which is allowed. It is their $120 to spend. There are many members who bought stuff for family members. That is the exact same thing as Bobby and Victor allowing me to use theirs because then otherwise all the members who purchased stuff for their family members would then have to pay.

Dan Considine: I think that was not covered that certain people would be using other firefighters’ cards for their purchases and I guess that was what probably threw him for a loop.

Sierra Marchese: Yeah, but I was given permission by those two members because they said they weren’t going to use it and it’s their money to spend. It’s like the government giving us $1200 now and saying, oh you have to keep it versus oh you can spend whatever, however you want to.

Ryan Wilsey: I would say we have our treasurer review the bills and look at it during our next regularly scheduled meeting.

Heidi Baumer: I don’t know if I am speaking out of turn but I think the commissioners would need to decide that I can pay the bills based on that information that was just presented. So I am not sure that further evaluation of the bills would be warranted as much as approval to pay them in that situation.

Ryan Wilsey: I am OK with paying the bills as listed. If there’s a greater amount that we owe, I would say that we all need to review that a little bit more in depth to get that correct then we can pay the rest of our remaining balance.

John Shipe: What I kind of feel listening to what Sierra said would be that you would take the overage on everyone and spread it across that amount instead of one person benefitting from it because this is supposed to be a benefit of all.

Sierra Marchese: But, they gave me permission. They did not go to Ryan and say you can use it, they went to me saying I can use it. It is their $120 to spend. You can’t decide that for them.

Dan Considine: But you used 3 different cards, you used 3 different people’s cards to do that. That seemed a little bit underhanded I think.

Sierra Marchese: Nope, I think that was just good strategy.

Ryan Wilsey: At this point, I think it is a good time to end this conversation. We can pick it up during the next regularly scheduled commissioner’s meeting.

John Shipe: I will second the motion to pay the present voucher for MJM and pick up the rest later.

Heidi Baumer: To pay it as listed on the monthly report?

John Shipe: That is correct.

Steve Shuler: You made the motion John?

John Shipe: Yes, I made the motion we pay the existing voucher as written.

Steve Shuler: Until we figure out, I mean the purchasing agent went through it, so that is, I think at this point, the best we can do is pay that amount.

William Fletcher: So Commissioner Shuler, are you seconding the motion?

Steve Shuler: Yes I think he was making it that’s why I was curious because I thought he was seconding it but yes I will second it.

Ryan Wilsey: All in favor to approve the bills and the treasurer’s report? Opposed? Abstain?

Motion carries.

Heidi Baumer: Does anybody have any other questions before we move on about the treasurer’s, anything to do with the treasurer’s?

Good?

OK.

Capital Projects and Special Projects:
Ryan Wilsey: We have 2 under there. We have the staining RFPs and the generator update.

John Shipe: I guess I am the lead on this. Tuesday I was finally contacted by Ladder 91 Painting and Staining. As of the COVID backup, he said he would rather not be involved because it would be beyond October, so he declined to turn in an RFP. We have the RFP from Charlie Streb for $14,700 then we have Stan Worboys’ corrected RFP. What was left off last month’s was the clock tower and the area of the building between the building and the clock tower. His updated proposal is $9,700.

I would recommend we take Stan Worboys, 83 Ontario Street, Honeoye Falls, proposal to stain the firehouse building.

Steve Shuler: I second.

Art Morrell: What is his time frame John?

John Shipe: I think fairly soon the way he talked. Stan, I guess they are brothers and Stan has the account with Admar because they are going to get a lift. So it is being put in by Stan Worboys Painting. I think they could probably do it by June or July.

Art Morrell: OK. I would just like us not to have it done when the weather is not favorable like we have done in the past because I don’t think we get the quality of a job. That is the only reason I am asking. If they are going to do it in the summer when it is not wet and stuff, I think that we are better off with that.

John Shipe: Right, I agree with you sir.

Ryan Wilsey: Motion to approve the recommended and presented staining quote from Stan Worboys. Is that correct Shipe?

John Shipe: Yes

Ryan Wilsey: All in favor? Opposed? Abstain?

Motion carries for the staining quote.

John Shipe: John McGinnis has the original copies. I have copies of the quotes and I will put them back in the firehouse commissioner’s room for anyone to look at.

Ryan Wilsey: OK. Capital and special project generator update?

John Shipe: I have talked to FLC Construction. Their thought on the layout that I have from Dale and Larry Kaplan is a 14×14 structure with a 6′ porch we will call it. Roof only that will house the dumpster and cooker.

We will still have to put some sort of a fence around that and a gate to enclose the dumpster. That came to a rough estimate from FLC to being $15,000 and then if we put the matching brick siding on it like on the cell tower building that would be another $5000. I have a tendency to think that we could do this project as us being the general contractor and get it done reasonably by using our local contractor like Hastings and Shuler for doing the gas piping. I have not talked to Mike if he can do it or not, I know he has the equipment to do it. But if we stick with that type of construction, I think we are going to come in at a reasonable price versus $40,000 if we go out to a regular bid.

Any comments?

Art Morrell: John are you saying the $40,000 would be the building and moving of the generator or the $40,000 is just the building?

John Shipe: I think the whole project and moving the generator would be in that area.

Art Morrell: And this is you saying if we have it totally done, put it out to bid and have it done, not GC it ourselves?

John Shipe: I am getting that feeling yes from people.

It is a very small project and the big guys that do prevailing wage jobs, it kind of like falls way on the wayside. They don’t really want to do it but if the money is there, they will do it type of thing.

Art Morrell: Alright, now I understand.

Steve Shuler: We just got to be real careful so that it doesn’t appear as though we are skirting prevailing wage with this job John. We have to get a couple other bids. We both know they will be real high and then we can GC it the way we are talking. I think that would be the best way to approach it but we still got to get 2 other prices even if we do cut it down into smaller pieces.

William Fletcher: I think you want to be careful about a la carting the project as well.

John Shipe: I agree totally but as we know, there is only one group that will move the generator, that is the people who are changing the oil and servicing it now, they are going to move it. But the other part of the project is, I mean a 14×14 shed, should not cost you $15,000 I am sorry.

William Fletcher: I am with you on that John.

Ryan Wilsey: So the plan moving forward here would be you are going to obtain 2 more quotes then we can kind of take it from there what we are looking to do.

John Shipe: I believe that what I am looking for is a general consensus from the Board to say OK let’s move on, break it down into its parts and go out and get bids for each part.

Steve Shuler: I think that is what has to be done.

John Shipe: Can I get a motion then?

Steve Shuler: Yeah if you want to call it a motion so that it is a consensus of the Board that we move forward with getting 3 quotes for the individual parts, excavating and plumbing and so forth.

John Shipe: Second that.

Ryan Wilsey: All in favor? Opposed? Abstain?

Motion carries.

Do we have anything else under Capital and Special Projects? From last month we talked about interior painting and the commissioner’s room floor. Any updates on that?

John Shipe: No I don’t have any. I think I saw it on the board that Dale was trying to get a hold of the guy that does the floors.

Ryan Wilsey: Sounds good. Anything else under Capital Projects and Special Projects?

OK.

Apparatus:
Art Morrell: Like you will see in Dale’s report, the jockey pump on 6-4 has a pinched airline. What that does is it keeps the trucks, when they are plugged into the shoreline, it keeps the air system pumped up so you don’t have to wait for the air to build when you start the trucks. It is not a big deal. I really don’t want to have anything done with the trucks right now with what is going on in society. I don’t want any more people touching them, in them or around them that has to be. So that is going to be put on the sideline. It does not affect the performance safety of the vehicle in any way.

6-7 with the radio, I have been playing phone tag with Star Headlight and Lantern. There is some confusion on their end and again with what is going on with COVID-19, they are working a very limited schedule and for lack of better terms, I think they are lacking in their service right now. That is where that stands with that.

The new tanker committee has kind of been put on hold. I need to talk to the IT guy about getting a Zoom meeting stuff setup so the tanker committee can meet that way.

That is what I have for apparatus.

Ryan Wilsey: Thank you Art. Any questions about Apparatus at this time?

Buildings and Grounds:
Any updates there?

Steve Shuler: Dale’s report focuses on, I think Morland’s knows they got the contract to start the lawn. We met with Josh Landscape about some of the issues we had last year with some of the presentation of the gardens, the new landscaping and the weeding and everything. What we ended up doing is rather than rebid the whole program, it was under a couple hundred dollars. I have the exact amount here, no I don’t have the exact amount. What we are going to do is change the way the maintenance was done and it added a couple hundred dollars. We had a monthly maintenance contract or an annual maintenance contract, I am sorry, for the next 3 years as part of the original bid. By raising it a couple hundred bucks, rather than rebid the whole thing, we just decided we’d give Josh a couple hundred and hopefully that’s going to take care of some of the weeds and stuff that originally we didn’t anticipate.

I think that is about all I have for buildings and grounds other than what is in Dale’s report. He is kind of keeping up with the place day-to-day.

Art Morrell: Can I ask Steve a question? Taking the personal side out of this and so Morland got the contract for mowing, would we be better looking into having one contractor do snow and ice and mowing? Maybe we can cut down on some of the lawn damage and stuff with what is going on? Just a question.

Steve Shuler: Yeah that gets bid every 3 years. I think the snowplow comes up in this fall. That is an option. Mike usually bids on it every year too so I mean it is usually the best price. Some of the lawn damage the town does some, the snowplow contract does some. It is hard to say without having someone else do it.

Art Morrell: I agree with you that the town does some of it. It is never staked or anything. Regardless of who does it, I think that would help and maybe would eliminate some of the damage that we experience. It is just a thought.

Steve Shuler: I will take it under advisement, yeah even if we stake it ourselves.
That is all I got.

Ryan Wilsey: Anything else for Building and Grounds?

Personnel:
Did everyone have a chance to read Dale’s report?

Does anyone have any questions about the content of Dale’s report?

Motion to approve Dale’s report.

John Shipe: I make a motion.

Dan Considine: I second it.

Ryan Wilsey: All in favor? Opposed? Abstain?

Motion carried.

Peter Kester, you have a question?

Peter Kester: I see Dale is off tomorrow, is anyone working?

Dan Considine: No, no one is covering for him tomorrow.

Peter Kester: OK, thank you.

Ryan Wilsey: Now that we have approved Dale’s report, let’s move onto Leadership real quick.

Leadership:
Dan Considine: I don’t have too much with leadership. I got a reminder call from one of our grant writer folks that is local that I think Pete has his name, his name is Mike, last name escapes me right now, but I have an email from him. We will be talking about trying to utilize his help for grant writing in the next wave. I don’t know how COVID is going to impact that, but we will definitely be looking to try and get some grant writing help for some things, for recruitment and retention. I will have more information after I speak with him.

John Shipe: Dan if possible, this whole generator/washing machine would be perfect for that. The washing machine would be absolutely right in line with PPE cleaning. Would be right on the money.

Dan Considine: I acknowledge that. I will offer that up as one of our options for one of our needs.

This is actually fitness. Regarding our last meeting, we elected to keep the fitness center open for folks because it seemed to be a good thing at the time for people’s mental health and so forth. I just wanted to poll the Board to see if we still wanted to continue offering the fitness center to people to use in light of what is going on today?

Steve Shuler: I think it is a great idea. It is getting more use than it ever has, and I think people are keeping it pretty clean and sanitizing after using it. It’s turned into a great perk.

John Shipe: I agree with Steve. Monitoring the amount of cleaning materials they are using, they are definitely keeping it much cleaner than it was before.

Dan Considine: Do you think we need to do anything else if we do keep it open, any other safeguards or any other things? I was thinking about the social distancing, we don’t want to have no more than X people in at a time, if we want to continue that on.

John Shipe: I would agree to let’s say put up one of those nice signs on the door, remember social distancing, keep 6′ apart. I think that would be appropriate.

Ryan Wilsey: I agree and I think as long as it’s part of the areas that are commonly touched outside of the workout area are part of Dale’s disinfecting schedule, I think we are OK.

Dan Considine: I acknowledge that. Thanks.

Ryan Wilsey: Commissioner Considine, do you want to give an update on recruitment and retention?

Dan Considine: No status right now other than I have the grant guy, like I said I am going to communicate with him what our options are because we were out of the cycle last time and we are getting into the next cycle of grants.

Information Technology:
Ryan Wilsey: I have an update on IT or information technology. We did move forward with the tablet and projector project from last month. The projector arrived. The tablet we are kind of waiting on just based on the current situation. As far as IT management goes, we have increased the amount of backups off-site that our server is doing. The security has been hardened. We issued a new laptop to our treasurer Heidi. Everything is installed there besides we are waiting for Microsoft to send us some licenses so that she can use the suite on there. We have also again been working with our IT management company to change the way the profiles are made on the computers, making them a little more secure and being able to go computer to computer.

We have also received an offer, if we would want to participate in it, from the company we currently use to remotely access the computers so that I use to allow any of the users we need to access the firehouse computers remotely. The stipulation with that is they will give us 6 months for free then we kind of just enter in it. I think it’s a $400/year agreement with them and it would allow all of our members to be able to remotely access if we needed that, so just keep that in the back of our minds. I offered it to the chief if it is something that we see fit at some point.

Last time I kind of talked about key fobs. I am continuing to work on a quote for that, and they still are around $500 a door but that’s obviously without install. They are hoping that we’d be able to do the install.

Other than that, IT-wise we are running pretty smooth for doing as much remote as we can.

Does anyone have any questions?

Old Business:
The only old business I will bring up is I think that as the Board or maybe through the Chief, we should issue a reminder every so often about the social distancing and kind of how we are looking for the firehouse to operate during these conditions. So we want the doors left open and we want Dale disinfecting regularly but feel free to pick up. There is hand sanitizer there provided by the county to refill your bottles with if that’s an issue accessing it. I think it might be good from us as a Board or maybe kind of work with the chief just to remind everybody that we are here for you. The other old business is to keep checking in on everybody.

If no other old business, let’s move to new business.

New Business:
Any new business?

John Shipe: Is it our responsibility, as a Board since we approve the fire department’s fund raising, is it prudent for us to cancel the carnival fund raiser?

William Fletcher: John, what has been the pattern in the past? You guys gear up when? Pretty quickly here in May right? It takes about a month of preparation to do the carnival doesn’t it?

John Shipe: The only reason why I say this is because our rival we have had for years and years, Fairport Canal Days, is canceled. They are on the same weekend. They go Friday, Saturday Sunday instead of Thursday.

William Fletcher: Does it make sense to kick it down the road one more month? This would put you in the May meeting. Wow, April, May, my gosh.

Steve Shuler: I don’t know. I suppose we could take action. Like I said earlier, I think the chances are it being canceled are pretty good. I know we kept with the ride company I kind of use the 15th as a drop dead date. I know you guys kicked one around an email later than that.

The way it is looking right now with the Health Department, like I said, I reached out to a couple people there, I have not gotten with the actual food safety manager because they are on an appointment basis but from what the help is kind of telling me up there, it is not looking good.

William Fletcher: Second week in May would be too late?

John McGinnis: Just from the public health standpoint, it is kind of hard to bite the bullet but the thing is and the consensus from public health point of view, they don’t know what is going to happen after the peak is reached and after things appear to be going back to normal and there is a certain amount of fear and concern about a re-spiking and reoccurrence. That would concern me with a carnival because if we came into a clearing where we could have it and there was, God forbid, a reoccurrence, I don’t think we want to be involved in that, you know. It might be best to bite the bullet and I know Steve, you probably had a lot of questions. I can’t go to Mendon Marketplace and every day I get one or two questions from people there, what’s going to happen with the carnival. It is neither here nor there but they want to know. Possibly making a decision sooner rather than later might be better. I don’t know.

William Fletcher: Isn’t it just the reverse though given the monetary benefits to the department? Wouldn’t you want to give it every possible chance of going forward before you pull the plug? I am just thinking aloud.

John McGinnis: I agree. I don’t think there is any way to make up the monetary loss. It just scares me watching the environmental effects on the news of proceeding with something and having a re-spike and having somebody say did you exercise due diligence and then you get into the whole thing, we think you did we think you didn’t. It is an unknown area.

William Fletcher: I completely understand. I am always hoping for miracles. If you kick it down the road until the second week of May and say there is no miracle that can possibly happen here so we are going to cancel the carnival, that would seem to me to be the last possible date by which you could cancel it and still maintain some level of some semblance of due diligence and so on. But why not wait until the last minute?

John McGinnis: I don’t have any problem with that Bill. We will be exercising due diligence whether we do it now or whether we wait.

William Fletcher: I guess that is the question, might the Board be criticized somehow or other for not canceling it now but waiting to the last minute? I throw that up to the Board.

Ryan Wilsey: I guess my comment on it is, is all of the efforts that I usually make towards it I fell back on on purpose based on that. As far as like the parade, right now we are not having one. Same thing with like advertising. That is my department speaking right there in that sense, but that’s where I am at. I think as a Board is it up to us? I think we can leave it to the department and the insurance side of things. I am not sure that our insurance company is going to want to help cover that if it is contributing to us.

John McGinnis: To play devil’s advocate, if somehow we could have it, I think it would probably be the best community celebration we have seen in quite some time. That is something to balance it with. You don’t need a parade, people would be so glad to get out it would probably be a big success.

Ryan Wilsey: I agree with that. I think at this point our best course of action could be maybe recommend to the department that they make an announcement updating the public saying that we are closely monitoring the situation and are unsure what is going to happen but we are closely monitoring the situation and will ultimately come to a decision by probably May 15th at the latest or May 1st.

Again, like you were saying, who knows what is going to happen, but I think we need to definitely inform people that we are thinking about it as the fact of we are starting to get 3-4 questions a day.

Steve Shuler: Yeah, I agree with you Ryan but I think a decision will probably be made by next week or so. I looked at the 15th when we talked about this a couple weeks ago. My recommendation would be that as a Board we don’t do anything but let the chips fall where they are. Really the drop dead date would be end of the month as far as permits and everything like that go. The 15th is about the cutoff but we could push it a couple more weeks.

From what I am hearing again through the Health Department, I think it’s pretty much a lost cause on the carnival.

William Fletcher: I think the odds are slim that things are going to improve to such a state of affairs the carnival can go forward but you never know. Hey, you never know. So long as it doesn’t cost the district or the department any money, why not wait until the last minute then pull the plug when you absolutely have to with the hope it could possibly work. Like John said, one hell of a celebration.

Steve Shuler: Though I can say the trouble of just coming out of it was I see the ride company having to wash the cars out every time people got on it. Something like that developing, it would be so close.

John McGinnis: We could put out a statement that we are working and hoping to have the most fantabulous, wonderful, excellent, exciting, superlistic, califragilistic carnival the country has ever seen. Sorry I couldn’t resist that.

William Fletcher: When has the carnival ever been canceled?

Steve Shuler: It got rained on where we pretty much canceled it.

John Shipe: It still happened but I think we profited $3000 the one year. As food procurement, I am getting a lot of questions about the orders. That is why I am asking.

William Fletcher: Is it up to the Board or is it up to the department? I think it is up to the department to draw the line in the sand and say May 1st will be the yay or nay date.

John Shipe: I only mentioned it because we have to approve, in our January meeting we approve all fundraisers for the department. That is the only reason.

Dan Considine: I don’t believe, I mean, if we talk to our insurance people, there would be probably some real push back if we told them we were continuing on. So I don’t think we, like Steve said, the decision is going to be made for us pretty much. I don’t think we are going to have a lot of say in it.

Ryan Wilsey: I agree at this point. Hello Art.

I would recommend that we make the recommendation to the department to make that statement and that we will have to double/triple check with our insurance carrier to see if it is an acceptable practice even if we were to carry on.

Do we have any other new business at this point?

OK. I will make a motion to adjourn.

Steve Shuler: I will second that.

Ryan Wilsey: All in favor? Opposed? Abstain?

Meeting adjourned at 20:19.

Respectfully submitted,

Judith Baldwin