Marshall County Emergency

Management Agency

2369 Jessup Avenue Floor 3 Administration Building

Marshall County Sheriff’s Office

Marshalltown, Iowa 50158

PH: (641) 754-6385 Fax (641) 754-6389

Kim Elder, Coordinator

Wednesday, November 30, 2016 6:00 p.m.

Emergency Management Emergency Operations Center

Floor 3 Meeting Room #2

Minutes

The Marshall County LEM Commission meeting was called to order by Secretary Kim Elder at 6:02 p.m.

Those present were: Harlan Quick, State Center; Steve Hoffman, Sheriff’s Office; Diana Schuler, Haverhill; John White, Melbourne; Eric Schmidt, Albion; Hank Penner, Liscomb; Kim Elder, EMA; James Lowrance, Marshalltown.

Motion to approval of the Agenda was made by Melbourne and seconded by State Center. All in favor. Agenda stands as presented. A review of minutes from June 16, 2016 meeting was made by all present. Motion by Melbourne to approve the minutes as written and seconded by State Center, all in favor. Minutes approved as written.

New Business:

Kim briefly went through the Local Emergency Management 2016 tasks as listed. No one voiced concerns or questions. List of some duties for the year are as follows:

Attending and/or Hosting Meetings: HS, MMRT Healthcare Coalition, LEPC, Fire Chief, EMS, LEM, IVCE, CERT monthly, Spotter training (annual), Des Moines HazMat, EMS biannual conference, ARES/CIRAS, boy scouts, Working with schools on FEMA school planning requirements, working with in home childcare providers due to state required planning, other

Participating: Exercises (state, county, MMRT, DAEC, Quad Cities Nuclear Exercise, Region 1 HLS, EMA Region 1), KFJB radio programs, CAP (Nevada Ethanol), City council/BOS (when on agenda), training (various), giving preparedness talks/classes, DAEC, local media pieces, hazmat incidents

Conference calls: NWS, IDPH, HS

Tours of facilities, schools, businesses, churches

Identification for first responders, manage CPR/First aid library

Sustaining and using Alert Iowa System, working on training and use for the hospital and communications center, possible IVH

Upkeep of certifications: CEM, Storm Ready, IVRRT, Iowa EMA, International EMA, attended FEMA EMI training MD, Pipeline training, earned amateur radio license, various trainings

Grants: EMPG, CERT, IDPH (for EMS), Mitigation (FEMA), HMEP

Other new business:

No other new business.

Open discussion

CERT – Kim talked about continued building and training for volunteers, our CERT (Community Emergency Response Team volunteers) are very active. They train monthly at their meeting. They have become 501(c) 3 for fundraising for their equipment. Kim plans on hosting another state funded CERT training in March for any citizen interested in volunteering on the team or just learning preparedness to take back to their home, family, friends, business and or church.

Training needed for LEM. Kim continues to attend trainings required and not required (but very important) through state, local and other entities to further her education for the quality of emergency management the county expects and deserves. Kim hopes to get to training again through FEMA in Maryland which is a totally free (reimbursed by FEMA) training for her and other citizens.

Continued training needed for first responders (fire, LE, EMS, CERT, etc.): Kim continues to pursue training that is offered through the state, federal or others to bring our responders the most updated training available to them for free or as near to free as possible. These are vital essentials to our safety and education for first responders.

Review of plan – conversion to ESF (state approved ESFs for FY17) process: The required plans are being updated as follows. These are required for funding and through Iowa Code for the local emergency management commission to be compliant. Kim along with community partners will go through these plans and update them as needed. The ESF 2 is being totally rewritten due to a joint effort on Jasper and Marshall Counties over the last year to get vital information to improve these plans.

*required to update 3 annexes plus ESF 10 – Oct 16 thru Sept 17

Updated and sent to partners for review:

ESF 2 – Communications 2/16

ESF 10 – Hazardous Materials – 11/16

ESF 4 – Firefighting 12/16

ESF 7 – Resource Management 1/16

CDs were sent out to all cities and the county (to city clerks, BOS, fire chiefs and police departments) for all to have a copy of the complete county plan. Kim apologized for the CD being a bit out of order for the ESFs, the new server at the county would not allow her to move around the order she burned the plan sections onto the CDs. If anyone has questions feel free to call the EMA office. Kim only burns a CD about every 3-4 years when there is a large turnover of updates on the plan. Otherwise, she sends out individual plan updates via e-mail to city clerks annually. All plans that have been updated last year were approved by the state and FEMA (if needed). Updated plans keep us compliant for funding and to abide by state code.

LEMS Budget for FY 2018 – approval for publication

*Needs action (publish approx. Jan. 23, 2017)

Discussion

*EMA is proposing a 1% increase for cities/county LEM assessment,

*the Marshall County Hazmat levy to stay the same, a proposed 3% salary increase for the coordinator.

*Kim has always budgeted for cleaning but is proposing to hire a janitor/cleaning person for 1 time per week just in meeting area, bathroom near office and office. She has not spoken to anyone but thinks that 3 hours per week would be about right to clean the 3rd floor meeting rooms, wash off tables, and clean the bathroom area. The county buildings and grounds have been helping and trying to keep up with the cleaning but sometimes there are so many meetings on the 3rd floor that it is hard to keep up and Kim is too busy to do it all.

*Reserves have been built due to Kim working alone with no additional personnel, obtaining EMPG grant annually, obtaining grants and Kim obtaining Homeland Security funded high dollar training for free for our responders, plus not spending dollars from budget on unneeded or unnecessary items. Kim spoke to several EMA personnel throughout the state and feels that it is necessary to have disaster fund for the county to be available immediately in the event of a disaster. The cities and county would be able to pay back that fund as they are able through FEMA funds or other means, but it ready to use if needed and already budgeted. Kim has built this fund over the past few years and in researching these other counties has the needed funds to carry over $100,000 for disasters. A comparatively sized county, Story County has an emergency fund of $200,000. Their county EMA commission suggested .05% of the total county budget be their ‘emergency fund’. Those present tonight suggested that Kim look at the county budget and see what .05% of the Marshall County budget would be. Hank Penner and Harlan Quick suggested this would be a good goal to build the fund to. Kim will come back with those numbers at the next meet. The commission also suggested to add a section (amendment) to the Commission Bylaws to address this fund and how it will be funded, handled, and refunded if used. Kim has a suggested change tonight but she will update the amendment and send it to the commission for review and voting on the amendment will be at the next meeting. This line item can be incorporated into the now line 44 HazMat Recovery (4-1413) since the recovery could be hazmat or any disaster related incident. It could be renamed to ‘Emergency Disaster and HazMat Recovery Fund’.

* Kim has also been putting a line item of $3000 per year into the vehicle line item. This fund has built up to $35,000 for a possible upgrade of the county EMA vehicle. Hank Penner stated that if we are putting money aside to upgrade the vehicle each year, it only makes sense to upgrade approximately every 5 to 7 years or as needed. The trucks hold their value fairly well, but the EMA does not need to drive it until it drops, we need to be upgrading so they keep their value and also are reliable for the EMA. Kim explained that the Explorer was a great upgrade to the 1999 Jeep that was used prior to the Explorer. The Explorer was purchased in 2011 (it is a 2010 year model). Kim is in charge of pulling various trailers that have varying weights. She stated that there was a need to look at larger pulling power for the EMA trailers as the Explorer isn’t able to pull what is in most of the trailers, even the one CERT trailer that is pulled most of the time, because there are so many pieces of equipment that they are becoming very heavy. The Explorer had to have a rebuild on a valve in the engine, possibly due to pulling ability, last summer. Everyone in the meeting agreed that Kim needed to look at an upgrade in the FY18 budget year. Steve Hoffman suggested something like the Durango that he has, which is capable of pulling much more weight than the Explorer. Kim said that she does need something that she can continue to haul the totes full of emergency supplies that she has in the back of the SUV currently. She was asked what mileage is on the Explorer. She stated just over 44,000. All were in favor of looking at either a double cab pickup or a larger SUV type vehicle for the EMA. Kim will explore these ideas over the next several months.

Motion by Eric Schmidt to publish the budget as proposed on January 23, 2017 with a budget hearing on February 2, 2017 at 6 p.m. Seconded by Harlan Quick. All in favor, motion passed. Kim will ready the minutes, next meeting agenda (budget hearing) and publish them and the budget in the Times Republican, Mid Iowa Enterprise, on the county website, county bulletin board, and online.

There was a question of how we as a commission would amend the bylaws, Kim said she would read through the bylaws, but current (at the meeting) she wasn’t able to see how to do this. NOTE *Kim noticed after the meeting that she had handed out copies of the OLD bylaws the night of the meeting, so the next day she did send out the new bylaws to the commission members.

Other Business:

Kim shared the FEMA findings for audit in June done by Iowa Homeland Security, Lynda Wessel. We received a high rating, with only a couple of areas needing correction or action. One was the need for an employee performance evaluation for the commission to review the EMA coordinator annually. Kim looked at other EMA commission evaluations and came tonight with an example. This is a required area for FEMA funding. Those present reviewed the presented evaluation and suggested some minor changes. It was stated that the finished evaluation should be filled out by each commission member, then given to the Commission Chair for the chair and vice chair to compile into one form and then review with the employee (coordinator). Each commission member would sign their forms and then the commission chair and/or vice chair would sign them when they are received. These would be kept on file in the county auditor’s office. Everyone agreed tonight that these evaluations should be give out to the commission every October (Kim could e-mail them out), those commission members could fill out the evaluations and get them to the chair or vice chair before the first meeting commission meeting prior to the budget hearing (November or December). The chair and vice chair will compile these and meet with Kim after they are compiled and before the budget hearing meeting. EMA is also still needing a procurement policy for EMA office, county does not have one, FEMA requires for funding. The county uses the state procurement policy. Kim has always used this if needed for her EMA use. She will look at other county EMAs for a policy and present it to the commission when she finds something.

According to the bylaws, it will be time to elect officers at the next meeting for those officers to take office on July 1, 2017. We will need to elect Chair, Vice Chair, and 3 executive committee members to serve along with the chair and vice chair. See Article IX. Rules of Conduct Section 2 and 3 of the Commission bylaws.

Commission would like to start their meetings at 6 p.m. for those that are traveling from work out of county. Kim said she would make that change.

Set budget hearing date (February 2, 2017) – this motion was made earlier in the meeting.

Kim reminded everyone to keep their contact information up to date. She e-mails out all agendas, minutes, documents, meeting times, etc. to the commission members. She does not mail through the post office unless specifically told to for a member. If a commission member is not getting information she needs to be told immediately. She thanked everyone for coming and participating in a busy meeting.

Adjournment, motion made by John White to adjourn the meeting at 7:09 p.m. The motion was seconded by Steve Hoffman. All were in favor, motion passed.

NEXT meeting: Thursday, February 2, 2017 6 p.m. Budget Hearing.