Posted on: October 14th, 2013

Gold Hill FPD Board Meeting 9-19-13,  notes by Gretchen Diefenderfer

Next Fire Board Meeting will be Thursday, 10- 17-13, 7:00 pm at the Community Center

Present were President Donal Maloney, Rick Geesaman, Bobby Vrba, Secretary Dave Sturtz, Rich Lopez by phone, and citizens Tony Vrba and Gretchen Diefenderfer.

Donal called the meeting to order and called role.  The minutes of the last meeting were emailed, but had not been read – Dave read them aloud, and they were approved as read.

Public Input: Gretchen expressed the opinion that the Fire Board has a duty to communicate to the community and that they had said that the minutes would be posted on the FD website (goldhillfire.org).  They aren’t posted nor has she, as someone on the email list, received them.  Dave apologized and said he would see to it.  Donal reaffirmed that it is the duty to communicate effectively with the community and said the board needs to keep an eye on this.

Tony Vrba reported that, as the new Member-at-Large of the Town Meeting, she plans to attend FB meetings.  She stated that she believes it is part of her job to help improve communications because it’s important for everybody to work together.

OLD BUSINESS

Rich reported that the original site chosen for the dry hydrant had washed away in the flood, but that he has met with the Lefthand Chief , Russ Leadingham, and they have found a better site on the other side of the bridge downstream.  He will pursue this once the debris piles have been cleared.

The Debit card proposal for our Chief was deferred until Chris is present.

NEW BUSINESS

Donal asked if there any big anticipated fiscal impacts from the flood for us.  Only normal truck repairs were reported.

Rich asked about any planning to improve communication in the future, since our communications were hampered by the electricity being out.  What about Hughesnet?  A temporaty cell phone repeater?  Donal thought this issue might come up at the Chief’s Meeting with the Sheriff (which is where Chief Finn is right now).  Dave Sturtz is a Hamm radio operator and part of MERN, but isn’t sure what Joe Citizen can do.  Donal thinks this is a priority item to work on.  AT&T cell phones work at the corner of the Bluebird Lodge, but not Verizon.  Small Chinese radios as well as emergency phones around the district were brought up.  Bobby said that the Safe Site organization was also hampered by communications being down, but only 1 or 2 people came up and it got handled.

As far as our overall Flood Response, the board needs the Chief to do a debriefing and bring any issues to the Board.  The Gold Hill Firefighters put in a lot of hours during the crisis and the departments are all operating outside district lines because of many departments inability to get to areas in their districts.