HomeMy WebLinkAboutCity Council Meeting - Council Workshop - Minutes - 10/02/2001 COUNCIL WORKSHOP MINUTES
OCTOBER 2, 2001
COMMITTEE MEMBERS PRESENT: President Leona Orr, Tom Brotherton, Tim Clark,
Connie Epperly, Judy Woods, Greg Worthing, Rico Yingling
STAFF PRESENT: Dena Laurent, Jacki Skaught, Mike Martin,May Miller, Steve Hamilton, J.
Kraig Peiguss, Dominic Marzano, Sue Viseth, Becky Fowler, Lori Hogan, Jackie Bicknell
PUBLIC PRESENT: Barb Ivanov, Julie Peterson
The workshop was called to order by Council President Leona Orr at 5:04 PM.
Employee Retiree Health Care Promm
Employee Services Director Sue Viseth—We're here tonight to talk to you about a study that we
are planning on launching into here the last quarter of this year and as we move in 2002—plans
to study the feasibility of providing health care access for our retirees. Certainly not a new topic.
I know we've all heard a lot about it. The State legislature, in the last session, was very close to
enacting legislation that would have mandated such a program. We have been hearing about this
from our unions as we talked to them in negotiations. They are interested in the city providing
this type of access. We've also had it identified as the number one reason why our otherwise
eligible retirees are not able to retire. What I'm talking about is the gap.
At about age 55-65, when you're otherwise eligible to retire under our state pension system
PERS 1 and PERS 2, you don't have access to health insurance and Medicare doesn't kick in
until typically 62-65. The reason we're talking to you about this now is that it's been an
important topic,but I really haven't been able to focus on it because our primary objective over
the last couple of years has been to achieve financial stability of our current self-funded health
care plan. We have been before you talking about that in the past. I have been very pleased with
our unions and their willingness to partner with us, to incorporate cost containment features into
our current plan. Also, to increase dependent premium coverage, the portion they are paying.
We've been successful, so we really have shored up that plan. I'm feeling like I can shift my
focus now and look at this other very important topic.
We're here preliminarily because, before we launch into this study,we wanted to get your
thoughts and answer questions. We might not have all the answers now, but if there are areas that
you want us to look into and to consider,we wanted to hear from you early. My plan is that
we'll be working with our health care committee, which incorporates all of our unions. Also,
we'll be bringing together our employees who are eligible to retire to get input from them.
Becky(Fowler) will be working with Doug Evans, R&L Evans Company,and our actuary and
experts in this area to gather information for this study. Hopefull, by the end of next summer we
will be coming back to administration, then to the council with a recommendation,based on all
the options that we've explored,to offer retiree health care by January 1, 2003. That's my
. vision. So we're here early on just to give you a head's up and to provide you some information.
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• Doug Evans—We had a chance about two weeks ago to sit down with Sue and Becky and the
health care actuary we've used in the past. We discussed how feasible it was to partake in a
program that would piggyback to our self-funded plan now. We would seek to have most or all
of the costs of it paid for by retirees,but it would allow us, because the plan is in a situation right
now where it's financially solvent and doing well, if we have an instance where we have some
adverse selection or claims from some retirees, we would be able to absorb that. We still have
stop loss insurance built into our contract, too, so if it was a large claim, the stop loss insurance
carrier would pick up those claims. Because of the number of people we insure, a little over 800
people, having one or two large claims really doesn't impact the overall experience all that
much. For that reason, and the fact that we could probably shift most of their costs into the
premiums, it does make it feasible to look at offering that.
There's a whole range of options in designing this plan that we can look at doing to make sure
that it works for everybody. That it has the coverage they need. That's part of the process that
we'll probably look at over the next six months and we talk to the partners that will be involved
in this process. We also have heard from Group Health Cooperative, which is another offering
we've had, and they've indicated they would offer a fully insured plan, as well, to the retirees
who were interested. Obviously the other thing that we'll look at is the fact there is individual
coverage offered in the state. What we would seek to do is try to make sure within the self-
funded plan, that whatever we come up with helps people at least as much as those individual
plans would. The fact is, those plans are only good in Washington. They require health
underwriting in order to qualify for them and certain parts of the benefits under those plans is not
very good coverage. It's probably when the retirees look at those options that the people that are
eligible write one of the reasons they probably can't do it is (a)the cost, (b)because the coverage
probably wouldn't fit their needs.
Benefits Manager Becky Fowler—I was going to touch briefly on the AWC Trust. That is
another option that the city does have. The trust does have a retiree health care program
currently. You do have to be a member of the trust for five years in order to be eligible to
actually move on to that retirement program. So it's not something that's going to help in the
short tern. Also, the city would lose their self-funding because we would be buying an insured
plan through the AWC Trust. The other was a VEBA account. They are a Voluntary Employee
Beneficiary Account. It's a vehicle to pay the premiums. It's not a vehicle to use to obtain the
coverage that you need. So, all it will afford you is the ability to pay those premiums or those
medical expenses you may have. Also VEBA accounts are generally set up by the employers,
they're paid and the employers set them up. They are not employee-funded. I think the college
level funds TERS. I haven't really been able to look into that fully to see exactly how that's
funded.
Councilmember Tim Clark—My VEBA is actually from the school district's side and the
administrators, who had other significant financial resources, created it. The agency that took
that up eventually got a release from the state law to begin to create that pooling and it's all
administered by a fund out of Spokane for the state. One of the oddities in the pooling is that
you, at least in the school district level, get asked whether you're a group cohort that is retiring
and wish to send money into that fund. Councilmember Judy Woods—We have to have an
election to ask every one of the retirees to determine whether we want all of the sick leave
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. money in hand or whether we want to leave it in the account. It's much better left in the account,
but I can tell you that, this last year when I retired, it was a split vote. I know that it will be there
for me to pay my health premiums until it is gone, or for any other major reason—glasses or
hearing aids or whatever else I might need.
Sue Viseth—That's what's important about VEBA too. That's what we've been hearing from
the unions. I'm actually talking about establishing them on your own, administered through the
unions, police and fire as an example,but asking the city to handle any payroll deductions, that
type of thing. We're going to explore that as well, because it's something that might be
partnered with the offering of health care insurance. Everything is on the table as we start
looking into all of this.
Judy Woods— I'm delighted, as Sue knows,that we're thinking of going in this direction. The
only reason I could take early retirement is that I could continue receiving health benefits, at my
own cost but none the less it was there for me until I reached Medicare. It's been wonderful, and
Sue and I had the conversation last year and she was saying it doesn't happen here. There are a
lot of folks for whom it would be a wonderful opportunity. The one concern I expressed was
that we do have retirees who are well away from being on Medicare. As long as they have a
partner or spouse who is covering them in another way, that works fine for them but some of
them don't, or they are reaching the point where the spouse is retiring. So,my concern was that
there must be some way to look into whether it's possible for those people who have already
retired to in some way come back and pay their own premiums, but be a part of the plan. Sue
Viseth—We'll definitely look into that too.
• Councilmember Tom Brotherton—You started off by telling us there was a dislocation going on
for people who were otherwise eligible to retire but who were not retiring. I wonder how much
different our story is from other cities or organizations. Are we in the same boat as most cities
right now? Doug Evans—I can tell you, as I work with several different cities, that you are. We
are currently doing a study for the City of Redmond and that is a topic that each of the
bargaining units have proposed and is part of the study—to try and look into the feasibility of
doing some type of retiree plan. The fact that it's been before the legislature with regard to
municipal employers will further that cause as well.
Tom Brotherton—Is the legislature looking at a specific plan to require cities or just that you
have some plan? Sue Viseth—There wasn't a specific plan, but they were very close to
mandating that we offer a comparable plan. We certainly were working with Doug Levy
representing our interest about the costs, and one of the concerns is having the active employees
subsidizing the cost of retirees. We're certainly keeping all that in mind. We have copies of the
legislation. What they were working on in the past. We'll be working with Dena and Doug as
we go into these next sessions, but I think we're going to be able to meet what the state would
have been mandating. I'm sure the timelines will work out because I can't imagine they'd
expect you to enact something within months of legislation coming out.
Tom Brotherton—Might there be benefits to working with other cities in the same situation?
Becky Fowler—It was attempted through the AWC Feasibility Study. AWC actually sponsored
that, this last year, and there were 14 self-funded cities throughout Washington State that joined
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• in on that and it just wasn't workable with them. Sue Viseth—Doug can talk a little bit more
about this too, because its something that I did want to explore. Certainly we understand that
AWC Trust represents smaller cities in the state that pool together for their insurance. They're
not large enough. They don't have a large enough employee base to have a self-funded program.
Cities like Kent, Renton, Bellevue, Redmond, the larger cities that self-fund, I thought with all
my wisdom - gee Doug, couldn't we bring all those folks together and pool a retiree plan? Then
Doug enlightened me with experience. That it wouldn't be as easy as I thought it might be.
Doug Evans—You guys have seen this, but it's hard for just a council to reach a decision on
certain matters. Sometimes when you're dealing with two councils, it's harder. When you're
dealing with multiple cities trying to reach decision it often is quite difficult, especially when it
comes to eligibility. Who would be eligible? Spokane, for example, has much more liberal rules
with regard to when someone retires what benefits they would eligible for, and they had over
300. When they did the study, more than half the retirees in the whole group that was being
looked at were from Spokane. Depending upon the end of these goals, you can have one group
that wants to do one thing, one group that wants to do another thing and it makes it very difficult
for everybody to reach a decision. I think you spend more than two or three years trying to
figure out what plan design you're going to offer, how it was going to be funded, who was going
to be eligible. I mean there's lots of factors that are going to make it very difficult to set up a
plan with multiple entities involved. I can tell you with a lot of these cities,when you're looking
at the claims that are going to come in on their own retirees, they'd much rather look at it and be
responsible for their own claims than they are for other entities claims.
• The longevity of a plan also makes it important,because if one entity decides they want to do
their own thing and pulls out of the group, then you end up with other difficulties as well. Sue
did propose that,but I think it has been tried at least in the infancy state with the study that was
done by AWC and the results of that study were far less than the cities participating in it thought
they were going to get from it. Becky Fowler—We didn't reach agreement. Not even close.
Tom Brotherton—Instead of trying to get everyone in, would it be better if we could just find
one city like Renton that we could deal with? Would it be better to have two cities in it rather
than one? Doug Evans—The difficulty is when you self-fund a plan. You're going to have to
have it piggyback on one of the two entities or one of the three entities' plans. Between, say the
City of Kent, City of Renton and maybe even the City of Bellevue participating, you might end
up with only ten or twelve retirees to begin with in the plan. You're not going to be able to find
a stop loss carrier, an insurance company that is going to offer you insurance for a group of ten
or twelve. It's got to be pooled in with another larger group, so they either have to be
piggybacked on Kent's plan, or on Bellevue's plan, or someone else's plan. Therein lies the
difficulty of doing it as a small group, or starting a plan with just a small number of people
eligible for it.
Sue Viseth—I can tell you I will be talking to my colleague in Renton, Mike Webby, who I
know very well. He actually initiated our self-funded program here in Kent,back in the early
1980's. Doug hasn't heard me talk about this, so don't be alarmed. The only way I could see it
working, would be if the larger cities were willing to pool their self-funding collectively,which
again would be a meeting of the minds and we have our program structured a certain way. It
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• meets our contract obligations with our unions, so it would be probably more like a three to five
year process,but nothing is on the table right now. This is why we want to hear from you, so we
can explore all these ideas. I will be talking to my counterparts in other cities that participate in
this AWC Study to see what they're thinking. How they are going to meet the needs of the
retirees.
Councilmember Rico Yingling—How does promoting early retirement benefit the community?
Sue Viseth—That's a very good question,because in essence this is a double-edged sword. Our
age 55 to 65 are typically our most experienced executive senior level managers. Right now, the
fact that many of them are otherwise eligible to retire under the state system but don't choose to,
because they don't have access to health insurance, means we continue to reap the benefits of
their expertise here in the city. One of the areas that we've been exploring in our department,
Anh Hoang, specifically, and I,have been talking about succession planning and career
development. We know we're going to see a shortfall with the baby boomer generation aging
and retiring and there's a gap. There will be gaps in knowledge base and experience. We're
talking, and this is something we're actually working with other cities on, talking about how
we're going to fill that. How do we provide training and education and succession plans to
someone who's been trained to step in and take that roll for those managers as they retire?
That's a very good point. We actually could lose that knowledge and experience base.
One thing the state has done is they have changed the retirement restrictions for folks, so when
they do retire they are able to come back and work for their employer. They've extended the
number of hours and we've seen that as it provides a transition. We've actually had retirees in
the city that come back and work for us for some limited number of hours and transition their
experience and their knowledge and the state has expanded that. So I think that will help. It is
an area of concern and we're aware of it and we're working on it.
Rico Yingling—Did I hear you correctly when you said this is at no cost to the city government?
It's all paid for by the retiree? Doug Evans—Our goal is to try and establish rates that will make
that so, yes. Obviously when you're dealing with a small group, as we would at least to begin
with on this retiree plan,there are going to be fluctuation in claims from month to month. But,
over a period of time it would be our goal to try and make it fund itself, yes. Sue Viseth—We
also want to be realistic though. That we're offering something that is affordable to the retiree.
Typically we'd be looking at the retiree and their spouse. One of the reasons we want to have
discussions with this eligible group is to say- If we were to restructure the benefits so that it
provides for the major medical,which helps to bring the premium cost down, what's your
preference? That the premium is lower? It may mean that you're paying for your office visits,
but if you have that surgery, or whatever,that's paid in full versus having to elevate the
premiums to offer a plan that's more comprehensive, like what our active employees have. So,
those are discussions we want to have with our eligible retirees, but we want to make sure what
we offer is affordable and we also don't want the city to have to absorb that cost.
Doug Evans—Certainly we know what individual plans cost right now and what those benefits
are, and that is a starting base for designing a plan that has cost containment that maybe has a
. high deductible and we can work off those rates to help us to establish rates to begin with. Judy
Woods—I would think that almost anything you come up with in terms of the rates is going to be
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• much better than people trying to find their own. Doug Evans—And there's difficulty involved
with medical underwriting too. Sue Viseth -And qualifying for that insurance. That's a big
problem, if you have any pre-existing conditions.
Rico Yingling— I still don't see how the community gains by promoting early retirement.
SueViseth—Right now the state system is already set up with these individuals who are eligible
to retire. There's a level of growing frustration and the voices of those eligible to retire are
becoming more numerous. Again we're hearing from the unions as well, from their
membership, that they want the city to look into this and, quite honestly, I do expect that we're
going to see legislation that's going to mandate this in some form to the city. I think we're
obligated, at a minimum, to study and to come back to you with some options and potential
recommendations. I'm hopeful that we would be able to offer it,because I do think there are
ways that we can still have those retirees come back and work for us, transition that knowledge
and it can be mutually beneficial. When you're here and you don't want to be here, you suffer
that way too. When you have employees who really want to be able to retire,but they can't and
the one thing keeping them is health insurance, I think the community doesn't necessarily benefit
from that either.
Chamber Economic Workshops
Barb Ivanov, Kent Chamber of Commerce—I have a very special invitation for each of you, and
want to address Council President and members of the council. I also want to thank Dena and
Jacki for sharing their ideas and input and, as part of a planning team, organizing this series of
events that have really helped us to focus our thoughts and get to better ideas. The Chamber has
. been looking for ways to continually improve our economy and build on the tremendous base
that we have here, not only in Kent proper,but also in the entire region. We've engaged with a
planning team to construct and share ideas about strategic planning for the economy with you.
You are such valuable partners and you manage such significant resources here that we wanted
to come to you and formally extend an invitation to participate in two events. The purpose of
these events is twofold. First is simply to share information that the Chamber and the City have
developed over the last few years on the local economy, so that we all have the baseline, the
same page, the same sort of common understanding about what the drivers are, what actually
works well in our community. The second purpose, that we think is also quite important, is to
share the economic development goals of our organizations, so that we understand your thinking
and your policy set, and we can share ideas, not only from our board but from leaders who are in
other sectors who may not be currently serving as board members.
We want to begin to create a tightly functioning partnership not only between our organizations,
but the Kent Downtown Partnership,the three community/technical colleges that serve our area,
as well as the K-12 district— everyone who really has hold of one of the big levers in our
community. In the interest of achieving those goals, we've set up two meetings, and the first will
be on December 5`h. It will be a very short morning briefing 7:30— 10:00 a.m. and that purpose
is to share information. It should be quite fun. We're going to actually play a little bit with
stereotypes about Kent, about thinking amongst these different institutions so we should come
out of that short meeting with that common understanding of the drivers of the economy. The
second event is a big time commitment and that's why I'm here today is to very respectfully ask
• you to mark your calendar now. It's a full day and we're "ballparking"this at 8:00 a.m. —3:00
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• p.m. We'll be able to finalize information out a little bit closer, and the agenda for that event
will be driven by scenario planning exercises.
Before the Boeing announcement, we thought the worst case scenario of all time would be
Boeing shutting down the Renton plant and diminishing their business in Auburn fabrication and
maybe in the Kent defense plant as well. Life has sort of overtaken some of that. Again, what
we'll be doing there is actually working in teams, building different scenarios so that we're
ready. That we, as a community, have at least thought about how we're going to overcome
significant impacts and how well prepared we are, as well, for that type of eventuality. I think it
will be a really interesting day. We want you to bring your very large brains and your very best
input and you'll have a chance to discuss, and it's strictly discussion. I've been informed that
statute will not allow us to enact any legislation, nor should we,but it will be a really interesting
discussion period. I think we'll all get a lot out of it.
Fire Strategic Plan
Acting Fire Chief Steve Hamilton—Introduced Lt. Kraig Peiguss who will be giving a Power
Point presentation. Lt. Peiguss, along with Chief Marzano,headed up a task force,which was
made up of some Fire Department personnel and some citizens of Kent and Fire District 37.
Leona Orr and Connie Epperly were on the committee and we really appreciate their input.
There was a lot of great input. We've developed seven initiatives that we would like to take
forward. This doesn't tell us how to do what we want to do. This basically gives us a
framework for it.
. Kraig Peiguss - My intention tonight is just to give you a brief overview of the Strategic
Planning Process we went through and the document you have in front of you. Approximately a
year ago now, Chief Angelo came to me and asked me if I would be willing to facilitate putting
together the Fire Department's strategic plan. I don't know if I was given a lot of options, but I
said yes. So,here we are today, a little over a year from when I was given that notification, to
present the document and the plan to you. My intentions for this evening are to go through a few
objectives. I want to give you a little background on the strategic plan,where it came from, the
importance of strategic planning,how we went about developing our plan, an overview of the
document you have, and kind of a quick look at the future of what we see coming out of this.
•
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• Background—It's been since 1984, when the department developed its master plan, that we've
put down in writing those things that this organization needed to continue to deliver service to a
growing community. Many of those items still haven't been fulfilled, but many of them have
been. So, we were looking for a new place to jump off from. The major point to talk about here
is that the environment has changed. We have had a tremendous amount of growth since 1984.
Calls for service have gone through the roof. Maybe the number of fires we have has gone
down, but our call volume has increased exponentially, due to that. Request for service has gone
up. In 1984 we ran around 4500 calls a year. In the year 2000 we ran over 13,400. So we're
looking at a three times growth. Laws and mandates have changed. It's becoming quite a legal
operation to do the work that the Fire Department needs to do. Two in two out laws, those kinds
of things, have changed the way we do business. Our customer expectations have changed. The
community is different than it was twenty years ago.
We wanted to take anew perspective. The importance of this document and our planning
process was that it defines our organizational priorities. Where do we want to go? What needs
to be done to continue to be able to meet the customers needs and expectations? It identifies
what we call the SWOT or the strengths, weaknesses of your internal organization, and the
opportunities and threats that are impacting the organization. So we need to take a look at that.
The other part is we wanted to get stakeholder involvement. Both Connie and Leona sat on our
planning committee but we also had representatives from the business community, school
district, and citizens that make up the City of Kent. Above all, it set some direction. It puts down
in writing where the organization is going.
. We went through a seven-step process to get where we are today, with the Strategic Planning
Committee meetings being apart of that process. First part we did was planning to plan. Back
in September last year Chief Angelo asked me to facilitate this. First thing we did was got
together an oversight team to ask-How are we going to go about completing this plan? We had
to look at what type ofplan we wanted. There area couple of different ways to do strategic
planning. You can do it on an internal, sort offocused on the department basis, or you can do
an external one. What does the community need, and what does the stakeholder expect? That is
where we went, looking at an external plan. We also came up with a timeline saying where we
wanted to be. Let's set some benchmarks and see if we can't get to those.
Rico Yingling— Where did that seven-step process come from? Kraig Peiguss—Basically a lot
of research into looking at the processes of strategic planning, books as well as looking at other
organization's planning, not just with fire service plans but also major businesses and
corporations.
The second step was articulating the organization's purpose, its mission, and its vision. Why
does it exist? And this was done through the executive leadership team. We asked- why do we
have a Fire Department? Why do we need a Fire Department? Why do we exist? And they
came up with this mission statement: "Our members strive to continually connect with our
community. We deliver emergency and non-emergency services in a caring,professional
manner with world-class customer service. " This is what the executive leadership team sees as
the mission of the fire service. They also came up with guiding principles and a business
• statement that you'll find in the document. .The next step was assessing the environment. We
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had to go out and take a look at and say-what's going on? What are the things that are
affecting the organization? What do the customers expect? We also had to do this internally.
We got together, up at our Station 75 one day, with all of our executive officers, everybody from
the lieutenant to anybody that had any supervisory responsibilities, and said let's go though a
process and figure out what the issues are. What's keeping us or what is holding us back from
being able to deliver customer service.
It takes a look at the strengths and weaknesses of the organization as well. We also wanted to
take a look externally. What does the community expect? What are those opportunities and
threats that are out there that are going to impact our ability to deliver service? In the part of
the stakeholder expectations that we went through was a fairly thorough look in a customer
survey we sent out to approximately 2500 residents in Kent to ask for their input. The fourth
part was agreeing on the priorities. We took our executive management team and went through
a process of identifying all the issues that we could come up with and then asking- Of all these
issues which ones affect our ability to deliver service? You can see those in red scored higher
than anything else, and you'll find in the Strategic Planning document those are the issues that
we asked our strategic planning committee to set some policy, set some direction on.
Building of the strategies and goals. We got together a thirteen member strategic planning
committee, made up of members not only from inside the department, but from community
leaders, council,fire commissioners, and some community folks, including business leaders and
citizens from East Hill, West Hill, and the downtown area. We spent the first part of our
meetings giving them some education on what the issues are. What we saw are the parameters
. of those issues and then we asked them for direction to come up with an overall strategy and
some goals to measure those successes. I was tasked with the sixth part, which is, basically,
writing the plan. Through the oversight committee and my executive leadership team, we put
together the plan. We took all of this information that we had gathered and direction from our
strategic planning committee and set forth writing the document. The Strategic Planning
Committee overwhelmingly approved what was in the document. It sets directions. It shows
some measures and it also gives them the ability to come back. This is not a document cast in
stone. This is something that we're going to ask for participation from the strategic planning
committee, to come back at least annually to review those policies, those goals, and those
strategies that they come up with, and to ask if this is still the direction we need to go to be able
to deliver service to the community.
The final part of the implementation or the development of strategic planning is coming up with
the implementation plan. This will be done through the executive leadership team. They will
come up with those objectives and tasks to meet those goals and strategies and obviously with
that, the formulation of performance measures. Can we incrementally look at our progress?
Are we doing the right thing to meet those goals? This is how this whole thing develops; with the
guiding principles, mission and vision of the organization, what I would call the foundation, the
strategic policy, and the initiative and the goals that were developed by our strategic planning
committee. Then we're going to use the internal organization with the executive leadership team
to come up with the objectives, tasks, and performance measures to evaluate those. All of those
go back to why we exist and our vision for the future. Getting into the document itself just so you
• have some idea how it's laid out, it basically consists of four major sections.
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Section I is Executive Summary and an overview of the planning process. Section 2 talks about
the organization itself. The mission, the vision, the guiding principles, some history and
milestones that got us to where we are today. Departmental overviews, so that somebody that is
not familiar with Kent Fire Department would have some idea of how we're structured and the
services that we provide. Section 3 is the stakeholder analysis. Externally there is demographic
information and also the expectation and perception survey that we sent out. Internally, there's
a look at the strengths and weaknesses of the organization and also the opportunities and threats
that we see are on the horizon that are going to affect our ability to deliver service. Section 4 is
the strategic policies and initiatives that were developed by the planning committee. They set
forth a policy statement that should last for the life of the document and then the initiatives and
goals that they've laid out so far. Those are fluid. If something catastrophic happens, or
changes in the environment, it gives our strategic planning committee the ability to come back
and modify those. The future-approval and adoption of the document. If this is indeed the way
the council thinks the department should go, the Fire Department will be tasked with coming up
with an implementation plan to meet those goals. Continued analysis through the strategic
planning committee and annual review to make those updates and changes as needed.
Rico Yingling-What was the time horizon for your planning? Three years? Five years? Kraig
Peiguss-The document itself that we're looking at is probably a 5-year plan with annual review.
I've likened it to the Master Plan as kind of a snapshot of the organization. This will be more
like a movie. It will constantly change and be updated and goals and strategies reevaluated with
the end result being able to deliver the service to the community. Rico Yingling-Who's
. responsible for ensuring that the plan is actually happening? Steve Hamilton-The executive
team, whoever that happens to be at the time, and there's going to be an oversight with the
committee on an annual basis. We're going to have to initiate that and make sure we get a hold
of committee members to take a look at that. Rico Yingling - So these plans and performance
measures then would get looked at in the monthly executive team meeting or weekly meeting?
Steve Hamilton-I don't know if it would be quite that often. I would assume it would be
monthly or quarterly.
One thing we'd also like to do this year is to start an annual report that would reflect what we're
doing and cause us to look back at the document to make sure what we are doing what we said
we would do and anticipating this should be done. One thing about the 1984 plan, it probably
was a good plan looking into the future. I think it was initiated in 1982,but some assumptions
were drawn. One assumption was that Fire would continue at the same rate, that the call volume
would, and the anticipation was that by now we'd have 600 fires a year, not realizing that that
isn't the case at all. Lots of measures have gone into place and fire prevention has picked up,
smoke detectors and a lot of things have happened. So, we want to make sure that we look at
this annually to make sure that we're on board because a lot of changes have happened even just
recently.
Rico Yingling-What do you see as the two or three key directional changes for the organization
in the next five years? Steve Hamilton-Unfunded mandates are one thing. An NFA standard
came out that talks about response times and staffing issues. I think those are big issues. The
• future of EMS, we don't know how that is going to shake out. Just responding to our call
Council Workshop Minutes, 10/2/O1 11
volume. It's gone up three times in seventeen years. It could go up fast. We don't know.
Population—people bring calls. Funding issues certainly are. They'll be coming up this next
month with 747 and there could be some impacts there.
Tom Brotherton—Much of the document seemed to be aimed at fire suppression, and the results
are labeled fire of some kind, but 70%of your calls are aid calls and 5%or less are fire calls. It
seems like short shrift was paid to that very important function of response to aid calls. Steve
Hamilton—Actually a lot of discussion centered on the EMC. A couple of them—one is EMS
and one is response times. It folds into the prevention. It could be that it is also accident and
injury prevention, so that has the EMS component connecting with community. Judy Woods—
It's an organizational thing. You're saying it's the manner in which the department is organized
that these statistics that Tom is referring to would appear to lend themselves to the suggestion
that your report is not reflecting what indeed is happening in the community. That perhaps if at
some time the Fire Department were reorganized, then those things would be pulled out and put
in a separate location. Tom Brotherton—What I was really thinking was since 70%of the calls
are that way, perhaps the document should, as it evolves, have more sections devoted to that
area. What I'm concerned most about is the evolving chain in mission over time. We fight fires
the same way we have for 100 years, since in essence we get there, we pump water on it. But it
seems a very important element that ought to really take front stage, since that's where most of
our activities go.
Kraig Peiguss—I would agree. I think the strategic planning committee picked up on that and
actually developed a section of the plan dealing strictly with those EMS issues. I'm not sure
which number it is in the strategic planning part,but we have a section dealing with emergency
medical services. Page 33. Steve Hamilton—On page 29 it really gives the bullet points of the
seven initiatives and we will, in the implementation part of it, look at EMS and look at how that
relates. It may not be reflected exactly in the titles but it is a large part of what we do. A large
part of our business. I think by looking at it annually,we'll be able to tell what the future will
bring, and how it is. I don't say that fires are necessarily dropping,but they are not growing at
the same rate and, hopefully,they will drop because of sprinkler systems and smoke detectors.
Chief Administrative Officer Mike Martin—I think one of the more significant portions of this
plan actually has to do with EMS and the issue of transport and that's a really sensitive issue in
the department. It's one of the more expensive issues, so I know that there is an emphasis placed
on suppression as they are putting out fires. But to me the thing that really stood out were some
of the issues with EMS,because they are sensitive and expensive. I think we'll have a lot of
discussion about this in the future. The one caution I would suggest at this point is that we know
we have a new chief coming on at some point and the chief ought to be involved in this plan.
I'm very, very pleased and appreciate the part you took. They did this on their own, they took
the initiative. It's a good plan and I like the way it was put together,but I intend that the new
chief have his or her hand in it as well. So, there's a lot of discussion that needs to go on.
Councilmember Tim Clark—I would guess that in the last fifteen years, the detailing of the issue
of hazardous materials has taken more resources and time on the part of the department.
Somehow or other that needs to be separately categorized in the way we approach where we're
. using our resources. Steve Hamilton—In the early 1980s is when HAZMATs became adopted
O
Council Workshop Minutes, 10/2/01 12
by fire service. We reacted and actually we have a very good HAZMAT team and adapted very
well to that issue. We have addressed terrorism in the last couple of years with biological and
weapons of mass destruction and chemical issues. We didn't necessarily believe the threat was
as strong as it apparently is and we have been addressing it by having people go to training.
What has become more of an issue actually is technical and specialized rescue. Confined space
rescue and rescuing people off of cliffs and down in holes and trenches. We haven't got trench
rescue as a target but just about everything else we have. It's extremely expensive. It's time
consuming and takes a lot of training but we feel like the citizens that call 911 expect us to deal
with the possibility, so we've reacted to that as well.
Tom Brotherton—Six-minute response time is mentioned here as a standard, apparently. Do you
have six minutes for a response time? Steve Hamilton—Not exactly, but there are a lot of
factors. One is traffic and one certainly is the location of where we're coming from. We are
going to do some things with our training so that we're okay in our first two areas,more of the
time. That's going to be a real challenge to us,but currently we need to work on that because we
are out of position occasionally. We need to be closer to home. We're working on that. NFA
1710 (you may have heard of that) set some standards and they want a one-minute reaction or
turn out time. That's hard to achieve when you get bunkers on, to get ready and get the address
and open the doors and start the rigs, that's something we need to affect some because we're a
little bit over that. Maybe a minute and half. Other than that,we're teaching people to drive
safely, not to drive too fast. Traffic is a real issue. Whether it's realistic or not right now, we are
doing a pretty good job at 6.3 for the most part for EMS calls and we're going to try to reduce it.
Some things are somewhat out of our control like the infrastructure of the road system and
traffic, but we are addressing that in other ways.
The workshop adjourned at 6:04 PM.
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