New Albany City CouncilCommittee on the Ambulance

From meeting March 5, 2007

Since the Tribune actually did a good job of covering the council meeting, I will not go into great detail. I will try to fill some gaps, give insight, and ask some questions I have personally.

From the top, for those of you attending the meetings, we have some date changes. The Tribune reported the March 15th change to March 22nd. August 16 to the 23rd, and November 5th a Monday to November 1st a Thursday are the other changes.

Time and time again I have talked about the lack of communication between council members between meetings. These council meetings could be over in an hour if just half of the discussion time used during the meeting were done off public record. When a council person introduces an ordinance that finds heated circular discussion for an hour then gets tabled by the sponsor is just asinine. If you know your going to table your ordinance or put it back in committee (which has happened in more than one case this year already) then do so before you waste your time (and ours) arguing for an hour over something you know you are not going to vote on.

A prime example of this is the confusion over the pulling of FD ordinance. How much time could it have possible taken to make a couple of calls to make sure that since you were going to be absent from the meeting that the ordinance would still be on the agenda to be read? Of course there was no reason for it to be pulled in the first place, but how much time and headache could have been saved for a few minutes of communication? This is not an attack but, sincere questions Mr. Blevens. You work two jobs and serve on city council. Do you have a family also? You’re spreading yourself pretty thin. Do you honestly think you are doing as well as you should on all fronts?

A pat on the back for Mr. Zurschmiede, Blevens and Gahan for making sure Mr. Kochert understands what can be pulled from the agenda and how. All ordinances must be read 3 times unless, pulled by sponsor, voted to be tabled or put into committee.

Mr. Coffey blamed the previous controller for the city not having any money to spend. Could it be that all this trouble really only falls on those shoulders?

It will be very interesting to see if street names are actually brought forward into the discussion of street paving. The mayor repeatedly mentioned Market St. as a priority.
I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.

One thing that impressed me was the fact that the rule about not making comments of a personal nature was not broken until after 9:00 p.m. I believe the previous record this year has been 8:15. Of course those involved made up for the lack of an early entry with vivid display of running down the hall, jumping up and down, finger pointing and defending yourself by pointing your finger at someone else and accusing them of something completely off topic. The Mayor succeeded in a surprise attack, as he re-entered the room of council chambers through the back door firing insults as with a Tommy gun at Mr. Messer.

I have a few comments about the committee on the ambulance report. I would like to thank Mr. Blevens for providing me with a copy. I was a fireman/EMT-A for 10 yrs so I can relate somewhat to this topic.

Fact#2-“How many” firefighters are waiting to be trained for the ambulance and how long have they been waiting? Does there probationary period end in a years even if they don’t take the test? B-Training can and should be done in house. How much is outside sourcing of this training instruction costing us?

Fact#3-This is a serious charge. The public needs to know the names of the firefighters who were threatened and who made the threat of disciplinary action.

Fact#4-Who made the decision to use the $80,000 for the locator system the chief does not want to use? His actual response was similar to, “I will use what I want when I want.”

Fact#5-If there are officers on the FD that are not being paid at their salary position, who are they and how many are there?

Fact#6-It is my understanding that there are 85 firefighters. Not less than 15 will put the percentage around 20%. I think you are going to get a 20% disgruntled employee range in about any business or profession. However if constantly moving these people is costing the city money we have the right to know why it is a constant.

Fact#8-I also run a business and if I only collected 60% of the money for my products and services I would be bankrupt in 2 yrs. What is the fee for an average ambulance run? Do we need to raise the fee to compensate for those that can’t or won’t pay?

Fact#9-The Mayor and chief jumped all over this one. I would think now that this has been made public the mayor would want to here from the chiefs subordinates as to their opinion of the chief’s leadership. The chief should actually say “bring it on” if he is confident of his leadership. This vote would actually clear up the entire charge of this committee.

Fact#10-Use your favorite cliché here but this was not a good decision. Just put the firefighter’s shoes or your feet. If the only people you could officially complain to about your supervisor were the supervisor’s son or the person who appointed your supervisor to that position, how would you feel about your job?

I agree with Mr. Coffey that the city council should not micro-manage the city’s affairs.
For the city council to find areas of concern in possible mismanagement and possibly bad fiscal responsibility is not micro-managing. To do as Mr. Coffey suggested and offer solutions to these concerns would indeed be micro-management. These concerns have been made public (though not in enough detail) so it is now the administrations job to address them and relieve doubt.

To end on a lighter note, the funniest thing to see that night was Dick Stewart and Tonye Rutherford playing tug of war with a folding chair. If only my camera would go from standby to taking a pic in 5 seconds!! Damn!!