John Scarffe, Nederland. The Nederland Fire Protection District Board of Directors approved a sick leave accrual cap during a regular online meeting on Wednesday, January 6, 2021. The Board also renewed the contract with CPS HR and approved additional hours for the firm to investigate a sexual discrimination inquiry and a retaliation complaint.

Board Chair Iain Irwin-Powell introduced a New Transparency Notice Sick leave accrual cap. The District has no cap on sick leave, and Irwin-Powell suggested a cap at 600 hours, which is an average cap. All employees, except one, are way below that amount. 

Board member Henry Zurbrugg said 600 hours  is a generous amount and it has to be capped at some point. 

The Board adopted the policy to cap sick leave accrual at 600 hours.

The Board approved renewing a contract with CPS HR for organizational and compliance review. Board members said they contributed well to the department and don’t have any issues.

The Board then approved 20 additional hours for CPS to investigate a sexual discrimination inquiry. Irwin-Powell said the District had a complaint filed in November. CPS needs an additional 20 hours to complete the interviews. 

Board member Patrick Richardson said CPS will investigate if there is a case to be answered and produce a report. 

The Board also approved CPS investigating a retaliation complaint. Irwin-Powell said he would like CPS to investigate it without the Board getting into the nature of the complaint. Board members agreed that it provides more transparency and puts it into a neutral corner. 

The Board discussed forming a 16 Firefighter Initiatives working party. Irwin-Powell said that last year the Board committed to the Every One Goes Home Initiative and the 16 Fire Fighter Safety Initiatives. To push forward the idea, he suggested initiating a working party composed of a Board member, a shift captain and two volunteers to look into this. 

Irwin-Powell said he is looking for volunteers from the board to look at the initiatives and say we can do these this year, and that will drive goals and metrics. The department is generally  behind this. The first of the sixteen initiatives are around the culture of the department and partly how it approaches training, and we have general support for this, he said. 

Board members suggested picking six of the initiatives that they feel are important, looking up the initiatives and all the information needed, and then they can discuss it at the next meeting. Irwin-Powell said he will send out the information to pick the six they’d like to work on with goals for the future. For more information about Everyone Goes home go to https://www.everyonegoeshome.com/

The Board discussed Wildland deployment expense reimbursement. The District is having people going on deployment, but they are not reimbursing expenses for those who were on deployment as fast as might be desirable.

One suggestion would be to have department credit cards, but the Board was hesitant to hand out credit cards to staff. Board members said they need a policy on this and some clarity on reimbursements. Staff and Board members agreed to work on a policy. 

The Board approved posting meeting times and places on the website with the post office as back up. Meetings will be the first Wednesday of the month at 7 p.m. and will be on Zoom until further notice. 

The next meeting of the Nederland Fire District Board of Directors will be on February 3, 2021, at 7 p.m. For more information go to https://www.nfpd.org/.