Work Session MINUTES
Board of Directors
Jasper County Emergency Services
May 1st, 2018
Working session at the Board office, 13870 Dispatch Lane, Carthage, MO as per public notice. Present for the session was Chairman Fries, Greg Dagnan, James Harrison, and Dan Stanley. Representing staff was OSC Amber Madison and Executive Director April Ford.
Representing public is Kurt Bleich with Command 1.
Review and Action of Minutes
Open and closed minutes of the Board of Director’s Meeting on April 3rd, 2018 were reviewed.
Unable to make a motion to approve the Financial Report with Payment of the Bills due to a lack of a quorum. The Financial Report with Payment of Bills will be reviewed and approved at the next meeting in June.
Public Comment and Correspondence
No public comment
Financial Report and Payment of Bills
The sales tax check for March was received on April 6th, 2018 in the amount of $149,949.41. We have not received the sales tax check for April.
Total bills submitted for approval today $65,658.88. The Checkbook balance after payment of bills will be $17,521.57. Accounts receivable balance: $3,747.11. (Record request fee, Mets dispatching fee, and Joplin Fiber). The Money Market account balance is $1,165,146.34.
Executive Director Ford mentioned that Union Station has issued the credit back to our Visa credit card. Executive Director Ford advised that we cancelled the Navigator trip and we were refunded the hotel fees that were put on the Visa credit card. All other expenses for Navigator were lost. Executive Director Ford stated that Amber Madison will be able to go to the next class available for EMD Quality Assurance. Executive Director Ford stated that JASCO has a credit of $69.28 with Parts Express, she stated that we will use this credit when we buy new equipment for the radio project.
Unable to make a motion to approve the Financial Report with Payment of the Bills due to a lack of a quorum. The Financial Report with Payment of Bills will be reviewed and approved at the next meeting in June.
Executive Director Report
See Attached Report
- Executive Director Ford reviewed her report, highlighting that the center has been receiving prank calls. Executive Director Ford stated that this person is calling our center on the non-emergency lines and then when the call taker would pick up the phone it would start ringing to another 911 dispatch center. This has happened several times over several days. Executive Director Ford has made a report with the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Executive Director Ford found out that Los Angeles Police Department has found out who this person is and stated that this person is with the “Lizard Squad”. Lizard Squad is a black hat hacking group, mainly known for their claims of distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks primarily to disrupt gaming-related services. They use out of the country IP addresses. Executive Director Ford renewed the AT&T business block of time agreement for long distance at the same rate as before, 2500 minutes for $100.00 and anything over that at .041 cents per minute. Executive Director Ford and Chief Dagnan discussed that the Carthage City agreement with JASCO will be up for review next month. Both Executive Director Ford and Chief Dagnan will be meeting on Friday May 4th Executive Director Ford advised that she is still working with Newcom about transferring the Netmotion licenses to the Law agencies, the maintenance is up on June 29th 2018. Newcom is saying that Jasco has 78 licenses and Executive Director Ford has told them that we only have 43 licenses. Executive Director Ford is trying to track down the other licenses that they are saying we have. Executive Director Ford stated that she has been speaking with Missouri Department of Conservation about the netmotion licenses. She is wanting to give Conservation 3 of the netmotion licenses and then they would be responsible for the annual maintenance fee. Executive Director Ford went over some training changes that are happening at Jasco. She stated that Jasco will have “specialized trainers” and the trainees will move from trainer to trainer during the entire training process. Executive Director Ford stated that the trainers have been getting burned out, because they have been having a trainee for so long. Jasco will have a specialized trainer for Fire/EMS, Law/Call taking, JCSO, and Carthage Police Department. There will also be a training book for each phase. Right now Jasco has one book that has check off lists in it. Executive Director Ford stated that she is working on the procedures for alarm calls, such as panic alarms at residence, banks, and businesses. As soon as Executive Director Ford has all of the law agencies on board with the changes, then she will put the new procedure out for the team. Executive Director Ford discussed some employee changes, and explained what her plan would be when hiring new employees. Executive Director Ford shared her concerns with the fica/suta budget. The board advised April to hire the people that we need and that we can increase the budget if we need to. Executive Director Ford stated that a former employee Casey Butcher has not returned his Jasco items. The board agreed that April would need to send a certified letter to Casey requesting these items. Executive Director Ford has been working with vendors to try and get a different ring tone for Carthage Police Department calls. Executive Director Ford is having problems with AT&T returning her phone calls. Director Dagnan explained that he can’t understand why the caller id is not working the same way that it works for other businesses that they call. Director Dagnan stated that when they call other businesses it shows CPD caller id first and then after CPD hangs up it shows the callers id. Dagnan thinks this might be because they are calling VoIP to VoIP phones. Executive Director Ford is wanting to get Amon, Comtech, and AT&T on a conference call together so they can figure this out. Dagnan and Ford explained that a caller was very upset because she was having to repeat herself several times when transferred to Jasco. The caller was in a subdivision inside Carthage city and the Jasco dispatcher did not know where this subdivision was. Executive Director Ford is contemplating putting subdivisions and mobile home parks in as a common place. Executive Director Ford advised that the nextedge system had the switches replaced on 4/30/2018, and while doing this tower 4 went down. The tower went down because it is on a different network. The new switches should help the uid’s. Executive Director Ford stated that command 1 fixed the CPD radio volumes. Command 1 did several test and they have changed the IP224 volume to a 5. They will continue to monitor this and make changes when needed, but at this time officers are saying that the sound is better. Executive Director Ford advised that the house bill 1456 is on the floor for the Senate. There are several people that are not happy about this consolidation bill, because they think that they will have to answer to “big brother” all of the time.
Unfinished Business
Radio Console Project– Avtec Agreement
Executive Director Ford advised that the quote for Avtec is around $24,000.00 higher than Zetron after doing a full comparison, but this is mostly because of geo-diverse redundancy. Executive Director Ford stated that Jeff with Avtec went over the quote for Avtec line by line with April explaining each charge. The agreement is not ready to sign yet. The agreement is set for 10 workstations and 2 laptop stations in case of a fire or other catastrophic event that causes evacuation. Executive Director Ford is wanting a contract showing that Avtec will not increase their maintenance fee for 4 years and that they cannot increase the fee above a certain percentage. Executive Director Ford is wanting to speak with Rex about placing a backup workstation at Joplin. Jasco would go to Joplin and do bi-weekly testing to make sure everything would work in case of an emergency. Executive Director Ford stated that they project has went over budget so far because of the geo-diverse redundancy that Jasco needs. Without the geo-diversity the price would go down about $50-$60,000.00. The CAD interface is $23,000.00, maintenance is $1,840.00 per year and then we will have the charge of fiber and/or possibly microwave connection for backup. Executive Director Ford is also wanting to take several people to the training class that Avtec offers. The class would teach us how to change settings here at the center so we do not have to pay a vendor to come out and make the changes.
Radio System Connection & Changes at JASCO
Executive Director Ford stated that Avtec brought Jasco a trial console that we have set up on console 3337 in the communications room. At 1:22pm Dagnan stepped out of the meeting. Command 1 has been working with the radios to see why we are not hearing Officers clearly. Command1 found that we had a bad antenna. At 1:23pm Dagnan back in the meeting. Command 1 found out that fire back up, and mercy antenna were bad. The fire alert 1 failed and dispatch common failed the test. Executive Director Ford will be letting Rex know about this test.
Recruiting, Training, and Retention Incentive
Executive Director Ford showed the new recruitment business cards that we had made for the center. They are an easy way of saying come and apply for our position if we find a person out in public that we think would be a good fit for this job. Director Harrison suggested that JASCO go to one of the career center hiring fairs. Executive Director Ford stated that unless they are free, we have not done any of the hiring booths at the fairs, because the booth fee normally ranges from $250.00 to $400.00. Executive Director Ford advised right now we do not have the extra staff to do a hiring fair.
New Business
Security Pledge
Executive Director Ford stated that she will bring the Southwest Missouri Bank security pledge to the next meeting to approval.
VOYA checks
Executive Director Ford stated that Jasco has received seven checks with a total of $230.44 from VOYA for past employee Amanda Embrey. The checks were sent back to Jasco because Amanda did not contact Dan Igou with VOYA to set up her accounts. Executive Director Ford shared that Office Support Clerk Amber Madison told Amanda Embrey to contact Dan Igou several times through email, phone calls, and passing conversations. Executive Director Ford asked the board if they wanted us to deposit the checks into Jasco’s account and issue a check to Amanda or deposit the money back into Jasco’s 457 deferred compensation budget. The Jasper County Emergency Board stated to deposit the checks into Jasco’s account and send out a certified letter to Amanda telling her that we have a check at Jasco for her and to have her contact the center within 60 days to collect the check and to return her Jasco property.
Site Visit – Radio System and Console Information
Executive Director Ford is wanting to do a site visit in Virginia. She advised that there is a dispatch center that operates like Jasco does and they can do a 2 tone fire dispatch. Executive Director Ford advised that she would like to take Mike Runnebaum, Amon Henady, Chief Dagnan, Kurt Bleich, and someone from the Sheriff’s office to Virginia to see how the system works. Executive Director Ford stated that she has found out that we need to put tower 4 on vlan because without tower 4 we will not have enough talk groups for our system. We need to have 36 talk groups and you can only have 10 talk groups per tower. If we do not have tower 4 then we will have to have 6 talk groups channel steer to another radio. At 1:40pm Director Harrison stepped out of the meeting. Kurt Bleich and Director Dagnan discussed the talk groups and the vlan. At 1:42pm Director Harrison stepped back into the office. Executive Director Ford stated that we have the money in the training budget for this site visit and it is important that we see this system work before we purchase it. Director Harrison left the meeting at 1:45pm. Executive Director Ford will contact the Sheriff and let him decide what person he would like to send.
Suicide Hotline Calls and Procedures
Executive Director Ford shared with the board that we had a suicide call that will most likely result in legal action. It will not be legal action against the center, but Executive Director Ford will likely be subpoenaed to testify on behalf of Jasco. The patient contacted the suicide hotline before committing suicide and the suicide hotline failed to notify Jasco in an appropriate time frame. A family member of the patient has hired an attorney and that attorney has requested our recordings for this event.
This working session ended at 2:02pm.
The next Board Meeting is scheduled for Tuesday, June 5th, 2018 at 12:00 p.m.