Ian Irwin-Powell, President, NFPD Board. Nederland. On July 1, 2020, the Nederland Fire Protection District held its regular monthly board meeting.

The Treasurer and Chair’s report on current finances noted that the property tax receipts were slightly above budget and, at this time, do not appear to be affected by the COVID-19 crisis. Irwin-Powell did note that they may still see an effect in the next few months as the remaining property taxes are paid. Overall, the department’s spending is running under budget but, as Irwin-Powell noted, there are some lump sum items that are due later in the year that will probably return the expenditure to match the budget.

The board chair, Iain Irwin-Powell, followed up on old business regarding a hostile workplace complaint that the department had received and instigated an investigation into.

Irwin-Powell read the following statement into the record.

In May 2020 the board received a complaint of hostile work environment at Nederland Fire. In order to impartially investigate that claim the board decided to retain the services of Employment Compliance Solutions (ECS) to carry out an inquiry.

After an initial inquiry ECS found that the claim did not match the legal criteria for hostile workplace. The legal criteria for such a claim are harassment or discrimination against a protected group. Protected groups are defined by age, gender, gender orientation, religious beliefs, race, color, national origin, disability and reprisal.

However, based on the inquiry, they did warn the board that the environment at Nederland Fire could be judged as an unpleasant work environment and advised the board to carry out a climate review to find out if that is true and to remedy the situation. A climate review interviews all employees (both staff and volunteer) to gain a clear picture of the work environment. 

At this time the board intends to continue the climate review as an internal process to ensure that we understand the organization may be affected. It is important to note that the work environment is influenced by many factors and events. No individual or incident describes the whole picture.

The board is committed to ensuring that Nederland Fire fosters an inclusive environment free of any harassment or discrimination. We believe that such an environment is vital for the continued success of the department.

The board continues to investigate the other allegations and will report back when we have concluded those.

The board discussed the format and options for a climate review and Irwin-Powell said he would follow up with estimated costs for a full external review and also a review created by an external consultant and carried out by the board. Board member Henry Zurbrugg expressed concern that if the whole process was internal that impartiality may be a problem. 

In the Chief’s report, the department has run 173 calls to date and 37 in the last month. Calls of note included a pediatric chopper go, a motorcycle down in the creek and a CPR call that was, unfortunately, unsuccessful which is always stressful for the whole team. There were also many illegal and unattended campfire calls as expected for the time of year.

The department was successful in its bid for an EMS grant to replace two old cardiac monitors for their ambulances, a total value of $56,000 with a 50% matching bid by the department. This is a great opportunity to upgrade equipment that is no longer supported. A grant from 2019 for extrication equipment was also completed in June with the delivery of the final tool in the package. The board wishes to congratulate Chief Dirr and Captain Roberts on their work in securing both grants.

The Chief reported on the progress of the vehicle maintenance program requested by the board. Keeter Trucking & Excavating of Boulder was engaged to perform DOT vehicle checks on a number of vehicles, finding some maintenance backlog that will be addressed in the next month. Unfortunately, one of the water tenders was found to have structural problems that, in the board’s view, make it unsafe to drive and requested that it be placed out of service. The estimated costs to repair were not economical and the Chief recommended that the department look for a replacement vehicle. Keeter are also currently carrying out repairs the department’s main structure fire engine. The Chief reported that he is also talking to a number of emergency vehicle technician firms about long term contracts for vehicle maintenance.

The Chief continues to try to dispose of some of the old vehicles at Station 2 on Ridge Road and the general process of cleaning the stations continues.

In new business the board discussed producing the budget in a different format to get clarity on the department spending. Board VP Patrick Richardson suggested that he would like to see better line item clarity in the budget and that this would allow the department to make better strategic planning decisions regarding spending in the long term. The board agreed and requested that the Chief produce an initial budget by September.

The board had an extensive discussion about volunteer staffing and how to improve volunteer response, especially at night. This is a common problem with volunteer departments and the board decided to look into the call statistics and involve the membership in possible solutions. The department has applied for a recruitment and retention grant to try to improve recruitment of new volunteers. The department has a potential solution, developed in house by a team of volunteers, that the board voiced its backing for and will work on implementing over the next month.

Irwin-Powell reported that he attended the town BOT meeting the previous week where there was a presentation by Community Planning Assistance for Wildfire (CPAW) who the town had engaged with for strategic wildfire planning. The town has grant assistance for the project which must be completed this year. Irwin-Powell said that the presentation was very informative and believes that the conclusions could fit in well with the mitigation grant that the department and the adoption of more recent fire codes by both the town and fire department has applied for and looks forward to seeing the report later in the year.

The department is in the middle of having its ISO/PPC rating assessed, which affects home insurance costs. The rating is on a scale from 1 to 10, where 1 is excellent and 10 usually means it is difficult or impossible to insure a property. About 75% of insurance companies use the rating to assess property insurance rates. The district is currently rated as a 5 in town and an 8B in the outlying areas. This is good for the type of area that we cover. The rating is based on a number of factors, the two biggest factors being water supply & training. The board identified training as an area that could be improved to try and make a difference in the rating and will be engaging with the membership on ways to make training better planned, better structured and, hopefully as a result, better attended. Chief Dirr reported that he is working with the assessor on ways to improve the ratings, both in town and in the outlying areas. The board discussed a number of ways of improving the ISO rating, including formulating a plan of regular testing of equipment and potentially outsourcing some of the tasks that take up valuable volunteer time to complete.

The next Nederland Fire Protection District board meeting will be on August 5, 2020, at 7 p.m.

(Originally published in the July 9, 2020, print edition of The Mountain-Ear.)