Minutes - 20080909 - Work Session

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County may revoke the franchise as directed or as provided in Section 14-123, #5. This section says that, "The County office of Emergency Management shall be the enforcing agency for the regulations contained in this article. Such office will: 5) Recommend to the Board of County Commissioners the temporary or permanent suspension of a franchise in the event of non- compliance with the franchise terms of this article and recommend the imposition of misdemeanor of civil penalties." He said that if the Emergency Medical Director recommends to the Board that means it's the Board's decision to act on the recommendation. In this case, the County Manager was the one that maybe acted on behalf of the County Commissioners to stand the squad down, which is in clear violation of the County ordinance. Regarding requests for documentation, on the date that he received a call from Colonel Montes de Oca, he asked specifically about the complaints, and no explanation was given. On August 15, 2008, he formally requested public records from Emergency Services requesting any documentation and any proof of any allegations and complaints that had been lodged against the Orange County Rescue Squad. As to this date, he has not received any documentation. He called the Manager on August 21st and she told him that she was aware of the request and that it was being processed and she would check the status and get back with him. He has received no phone call to date. On August 29th, he called for the status of the request again and he spoke with Gwen Harvey who told him the same thing. As of today, he has not received any documentation of any of the allegations inside the preliminary report that Colonel Montes de Oca provided the County Commissioners. His questions are that, if Emergency Services has written proof of the allegations that were used to draw up the preliminary report, why have they not been turned over to him. If all of the proof has been put together to make the report, then he should be able to see it. He distributed the Orange County Rescue Squad response to the preliminary report from Colonel Montes de Oca. This response addresses multiple different agencies. He made reference to the self-dispatching issue and said that the preliminary report stated that the squad self-dispatched to calls. One of the incidences was 261 S. Churton Street. This address is the squad's station. Members of the community have been receiving emergency services at this location for the past 40 years. He said that this is a landmark within the County and since the stand down, the squad has received people coming into the station wanting emergency treatment and emergency help, as recently as this afternoon. Regarding the allegation of ambulances going out to dinner, he said that every ambulance in this County goes out to breakfast, lunch, and dinner. He asked the County Commissioners to please read this document before making any decisions. He made reference to the stand down and the claim that this is a temporary stand down. He said that it is his opinion that this is not the case. He said that it has been 71 days with no schedule for assessment. In the interoffice memo from Colonel Montes de Oca, he ordered the squad to be removed from the CAD system —all numbers and all apparatus was to be removed from the dispatch system. In an email sent by Lieutenant Joseph to Gordon Joyner, Director of North Carolina Association of Rescue Squads and EMS, it said that Lieutenant Joseph wanted to know the process that Orange County would go through to have the Orange County Rescue Squad removed as a rescue organization within the agency. He submitted this documentation also. Regarding training documentation, the Orange County Rescue Squad started utilizing new software in 2007. It is the Firehouse software. In that software, there was some learning and some unfortunate software crash, which caused most of the data to be lost from 2006 and 2007. However, in the training response that was provided in 2008, the rescue members that had been documented have a 28.75-hour average for training. This report was generated in August. The State standards require 36 hours of training per year, and some of the members have already completed that amount of training, but the rest of them have another three months to get this time in.