With an unanimous vote to pass the 85/15 funding formula out of the way, the Eastside Fire and Rescue board of directors is now faced with making changes, if needed, to the inter-local agreement which binds the partnership together. With pressure from Sammamish to get results before its Jan. 17, 2014 deadline, the EFR board, consisting of John Magee and Mike Mitchell, both fire district 10 commissioners; Dee Williamson from the North Bend city council; Joe Forkner and Eileen Barber, from the Issaquah city council; and Ramiro Valderrama and Tom Vance from the Sammamish council, agreed to form yet another ad-hoc committee to review the agreement.
This is the second ad-hoc committee – one was formed to negotiate the new funding formula. Issaquah city council member Paul Winterstein, will represent Issaquah on this new ad-hoc committee.
At the beginning of the Nov. 14 board meeting, it was announced that Ron Pedee, the board’s chair from Fire District 38, had stepped down. There was no official statement. With that, vice-chair Barber had to keep order at a very tense meeting.
With Sammamish still teetering on the edge of leaving the partnership, and the deadline for any partner that wishes to leave EFR coming up, the yet to be formed new ad-hoc committee will bring back new recommendations at the next EFR board meeting on Dec. 12. Vance and Valderrama kept reminding the other members that they were up against a deadline — the ILA expires at the close of 2014.
If none of the partners withdraw before the end of January 2014, the ILA would be extended for seven years. EFR chief Lee Soptich said he was fearful the time frame for new the ad-hoc committee would cause the board to make mistakes, but Valederrama responded by saying that a much more complex agreement — the funding formula — was agreed on in three meetings, so he didn’t see why any changes to the ILA couldn’t be made as quickly.
As tempers flared, Alan Gothelf, from the North Bend City Council, said, “Let’s walk our egos out of here and decide what we can and cannot do.”
Reviewing the ILA, the ad-hoc committee will be looking at governance and equipment issues among other things. Currently, each partner in EFR must select an elected official or commissioner to serve on the EFR board. All the partners — except Sammamish — has agreed that EFR should be a non-profit government agency, according to deputy chief Greg Tryon. With that change, the partners can choose who they want to represent them on the EFR board. Sammamish indicated they wanted this in its Nov. 12 resolution.
Sammamish also wants depreciation and maintenance of vehicles and equipment to be the financial responsibility of the partner assigned the vehicle or piece of equipment. Tryon said the equipment is physically located appropriately in order to serve the greater need.
Other points on Sammamish’s wish list are the formation of an operations committee composed of staff from each partner and budget approval by at least six members of the EFR board. Sammamish wants adoption of its proposed amendments to the ILA by January 17, 2014. If the EFR board has not adopted a new ILA by that date, the city manager of Sammamish is authorized to “take all steps necessary to initiate the City of Sammamish Fire Department” and include transition funds in the city’s 2014 budget.
In other EFR business, the board voted unanimously to add $22,000 to the overtime budget which gets them to the Dec. 12 board meeting. Fire fighters have been leaving EFR because of the instability, or testing with other agencies.
