Minutes of the Town of Greenbush

MINUTES OF THE TOWN OF GREENBUSH TOWN BOARD MEETING OCTOBER 26, 2015

Town Board Meeting: Chairman Limberg called the Town Board meeting to order at 8:00p.m. Board members present were Dan Klahn, Beth Lagacy, Ken Stemper and Paul Eischen.

Motion Stemper / Klahn to approve the clerk’s report as presented. Motion carried. Motion Stemper / Lagacy to approve the treasurer’s report as presented. Motion carried.

Supervisor Eischen would like an update to the property on Julie Court from Chairman Limberg. He would also like the Sheboygan County Highway Department to pay for damage that he felt they did to the new pavement on Kettle Moraine Drive when they were mowing the town’s roadsides. He also stated that he has been receiving numerous complaints of Open Meeting Violations by other town board members. He wanted to just warn everyone to be careful.

Dan Smith discussed the new lock that he feels should be installed into the drop box door. The current combination system is broke and can be fixed but will not staying working for long after it gets fixed. Therefore, he is recommending a 6 button combination digital push button lock. This system will replace the current lock that is on the door without any alterations to the door. The lock cost $165 and he will install and train for $75 for a grand total of $240. Motion Lagacy / Stemper to install the new lock system on the current drop box door. Motion carried.

Fire Chief, Steve Dickman, gave his monthly financial report as well as fire calls for 2015. Three members attended leadership training classes at Volk field the weekend of October 17 and 18. These classes are National Fire Academy courses provided to firefighter is Wisconsin. The installer of the new entry lock needs to come back and adjust the lock. The pin hangs up in the face plate, which causes it to stick in the door and not latch. The handle on the outside has quite a bit of play in the handle. We could make the latch work by wiling the faceplate, but I do not want to void any warranty and it appears to be a workmanship issue. The fire department received a letter from the Assistance to Firefighter Grant indicating they were unable to fund our grant application this year sue to the amount of applicants applying for grants this year. Our current SCBA’s are fifteen years old and three NFPA revisions old. MSA no longer supports these models and our dealer can no longer get new parts for these models. This past year two SCBA’s needed the low-pressure regulator replaced and one model needed the PASS device replaced. Since no new parts are available, they repaired them with used parts from salvaged SCBA’s. There are also several facemasks that have micro cracks in the lenses, which will need to be replaced if the cracks get any larger. Currently, we have SCBA bottles. 16 of these bottles will reach there end of life at the end of this year, and another 6 reaching their end of life at the end of next year. Each bottle has a life of 15 years. After they have reached their end of life, we no longer are allowed to use them per NFPA standards and unable to transport them full of air due to DOT regulations. New replacement bottles cist $800 a piece. Used bottles with 12 years of life left on them are in the neighborhood of $500, depending upon their age. The cost to replace 22 air bottles over the next two years would cost approximately $11,000 to $17,600. In 2013, NFPA revised the SCBA standard including additional safety standards. This revision forced all the SCBA manufacturers to rebuild their SCBA platforms to meet the standards. Along with all the new safety features, the cost of an SCBA increased dramatically. One of the new features is that the low alarm must activate at 33% of remaining air left in bottle. This allows them to have less working air on a 2216 psi bottle. Because of this standard, most fire departments are switching to 4500 psi systems. A 45 minute 4500 psi bottle will allow a firefighter 30 minutes of working air and 15 minutes of exit air. The fire department has been earmarking $10,000 a year for the last several years to put toward the purchase of new SCBA’s. We have not finished this year’s budget, but would have approximately $55,000 to set aside for new SCBA’s. The cost of a new SCBA with spare bottle is $6,700. In order to have work safely, we feel we would need to replace ten of our SCBA’s with the new models, keeping four of the old SCBA’s until we can replace them in a couple of years. This would allow us to have four new SCBA’s in the engine and six in the squad. It would allow us to have one initial attack team, one secondary attack or roof crew, one back up team and one operation officer to have the same model SCBA on, until a mutual aid RIT (Rapid Intervention Team) arrives at an incident. If more firefighters arrive later, they can use the older SCBA’s. The fire department is asking the Town Board if they would take the money not used in this year’s fire department budget, the $3,000 that was set aside in the truck fund last year and set it aside to assist the Fire Department in making this purchase. We will be looking at three different manufacturers of SCBA’s, comparing their features and costs. Will put SCBA’s on agenda for next month.

Dickman stated that when a call comes from the Wade House they usually only take the engine and roll with four and leave the remaining members at the fire hall. He stated that he would send out an email to other departments that charge for false alarms and will see first of all what they charge and secondly if they have an ordinance that we could use instead of reinventing the wheel. Will discuss at next month’s meeting.

Richard Braun officially turned in his keys and will no longer be the Janitor / Maintenance worker for the Town of Greenbush. Board members would like Brian Scholten to present a proposal on what he would charge for snow blowing and shoveling snow around the Town Hall / Fire Hall. They would like him to use his own equipment. In this proposal they would want to know how much he would charge for shoveling / snow blowing, when he would do one or the other or both (amount of snow) and when he would clean these areas. Would like to see a proposal by next month’s meeting. Board members would like to see the Janitorial / Maintenance position published in the paper of Thursday, October 29th and November 3rd. Once resumes are received make copies and forward to board members so a decision may be made. Wage will be determined at a later date and will be reviewed by the board. Motion Stemper / Eischen to publish. Motion carried. Motion Stemper / Lagacy to have Becky Schwartz clean the hall temporarily until a permanent individual can be hired. Motion carried.

Board members felt that the clerk needs to keep a list of needed repairs to the Town Hall. Include on that list the doors to the conference room, storage room as well as painting of the town hall walls and doors.

DR Kohlmann felt to replace the vents above the overhead doors of the fire hall would cost approximately $7.69 for plastic covers. This does not include labor cost which can run as high as $125 an hour. The screens would not be included in this price and would be an additional charge. Chairman Limberg stated that he did not want plastic but preferred aluminum so that they do not break or corrode. The minimum bid to fix would be approximately $140.38 per vent and at least 3 need to be replaced. Chairman Limberg also stated that the dryer vent in back of the building is also broke and he wants that replaced as well. Motion Stemper / Klahn to have DR Kohlmann replace the 4 vents with aluminum replacements and not plastic. Motion carried.

Supervisor Lagacy received bids for painting of the town hall and fire hall from Crown Services Incorporated out of Kiel and Lorier Painting & Decorating out of Sheboygan Falls. Supervisor Stemper received a card from a town resident that would be interested in bidding out the project. Get more bids and report back the information that was found at next month’s meeting.

Chairman Limberg met with the Sheboygan County Highway Department concerning Cudworth Lane. The road is in bad shape and will definitely need some major work to the road next year. Brian Olsen will work on ides and bids for fixing the road. Chairman Limberg did apply for the TRIP program for this road as well.

The blacktopping of Hillcrest Road is completed. They did not find anything in the sink holes other than muck. The muck was replaced with compacted gravel and blacktop.

Attorney Mike Bauer stated that he wanted the town to pay the $10,059 to Scott Construction for the work that was done on Glen Road and Cherry Road. The remaining balance of $1,437 will be paid for after the road work is done in 2016. A copy of both invoices will be sent to Attorney Bauer as well.

Motion Eischen / Stemper to adopt the Snowmobile Trail Resolution designating Plank Road (from Highway 23 Plank Road Trail to CTH-A) in Sections 10 and 15 in the Town of Greenbush shall be a snowmobile route. Motion carried.

Budget Hearing is scheduled for Thursday, November 12th at 8:00 pm in the Town Hall.

Chairman Limberg reported no building permits issued since last month’s meeting.

Motion Stemper / Eischen to approve bills for payment. Motion carried. There being no further business to come before the board, motion Stemper / Lagacy to adjourn. Motion carried

Brenda Phipps Clerk / Treasurer Office Hours Monday 8:30 a.m. – 11:30 a.m.