Minutes 03-15-2011 - Laserfiche WebLink

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Commissioner Jacobs acknowledged the presence of the firefighters that came to listen to the presentation. Commissioner Jacobs suggested providing maps in color. Commissioner Jacobs made reference to the response times and said that those seem very inexact. He said that it should be percentage of the calls that are reached per minute. Discussion ensued about the reporting of response time. Frank Clifton said that this initial study is just analysis and not recommendations. Chair Pelissier made reference to the weaknesses and said that she has no idea how big these problems are. She would like to see more quantification about how much of an issue this is. Gary McCarraher said that they would continue to try to quantify the data, but there are many limitations of the data. Jerry Lloyd, Chief of the White Cross Fire Department, said that there was a concern with the draft on his incident report numbers. He clarified that every single call that his department responds to, when it is finished, it goes into the Fire House software program. The numbers are compiled and turn into the Fire Marshall. In the year 2009, the report shows 100 calls that White Cross responded to, but they actually went to over 200. He said that the department sent the County a copy of the Fire House calls, and the County elected to go to the Department of Insurance. White Cross used to turn the information into Orange County to forward it to the DOI ( Department of Insurance), but that stopped halfway through the year. This is why he gave the County his report with the 200+ calls. Tommy Holmes, Chief of Orange Grove Fire Department, said that his department has the same problem as White Cross with the different figures. He said that there is not a Fire Marshall in Orange County that will stand up for them. He said that it would take millions of dollars to run this fire department without volunteers. Tony Blake, President of the Board of Director of White Cross Fire Department, pointed out that the fire study has been going on for a long time. The department gave these numbers to the consultant at the beginning of February and no one has gotten back to them. This is the trust issue. Commissioner McKee said that he does not think that many residents are unhappy with the fire service in Orange County over the last year. He said that the fire service is not broken and it does not need to be fixed. He said that the response times for EMS calls north of I-40 are not acceptable. He said that the County is spending $65,000 for a first phase of a fire study and there is another fire study on the shelf. He is afraid that this study is a continuation of the previous one. He questions the value of this report at this point. He suggested not going forward with this at all or keeping the fire departments out of it. There was no action required by the Board of County Commissioners. 9. County Manaqer's Report None. 10. County Attorney's Report John Roberts said that a couple of weeks ago the Board instructed him to read the UDO. He said that this generated a couple of comments at an advisory board meeting that accused him of not doing his job in not having read this. He said that when he got to the County, he reviewed every one of the land use ordinances and he has reviewed every change in the document. He said that this means that he has reviewed every bit of information in this document.