By Stephen Smoot
HCEAA opened its regular meeting last week with the reciting of the Pledge of Allegiance and an invocation from Paul Lewis in which he prayed about how vital it is “to be of service to the community as a whole.”
He then committed his last official act as HCEAA Board President when he offered his resignation after a decade of service.
The very next action lay in nominating and selecting Steve Schretom, Hardy County Commission President, to fill the role as President of the HCEAA Board. A unanimous vote confirmed him into office.
He then described how he engaged the State Ethics Commission before the fact to receive a determination that his potential appointment would not violate accepted ethical practice or the law. Had the Board President position paid a stipend, that would be a different matter.
Lewis informed the Board that he would retain his seat.
Schretom took over the office at that time and proceeded to run the meeting from that point on.
Steve Miller, HCEAA Treasurer, provided his report, which included income, expenditures, and current balances in the checking and savings amounts. Each agency then provided its own reports. As part of HCEAA’s Derek Alt, executive director, discussed issues with ambulance repairs and maintenance.
Schretom inquired of Alt if the agency had accounted for an extra week in May for payroll purposes. Alt shared that it was.
Next, Schretom explained how the County Commission has worked the monthly draw down so that the scheduled payout for July does not come from the previous fiscal year, which would violate the law.
Lewis then shared from 911 the number of calls in the first quarter. Ambulances ran on 169 calls, 79 of which could not be billed. The average time of response was 17 minutes and 48 seconds.
Schretom asked about the ratio of billable to non billable calls, commenting that “it looks like a lot of non billed calls.” Alt replied that “we have one individual that we go pick up a fair bit.” That individual calls for ambulance service frequently.
Miller asked Alt if any calls existed where lack of staffing led to no response. Alt said in reply “that’s a trick question.” Further discussion led to the answer that if one agency could not respond for whatever reason, that would be a mutual aid situation.
Miller suggested that agencies “note” if a response time went above 30 minutes.
Discussion then turned to operations and data. Roger Vacovsky, named as operational liaison, will help to evaluate data, such as that coming from non billable calls. His role lies in facilitating communications back and forth between the HCEAA Board and the agencies. The goal lies in creating what Schretom referred to as a “feedback loop,” or a way in which productive knowledge and ideas can flow in any direction needed.
Jean Flannagan, Board member, explained that the operational liaison’s role would be that “he or she is the go-between between this Board and the other agencies.” Schretom confirmed that this was how he envisioned the “feedback loop” working in practice.
The Board shared that should a difference of opinion arise between the agencies and the liaison, that they could express these in their reports.
When the Board turned to New Business, Schretom had an organizational chart and list of operating procedures distributed. The chart spelled out the hierarchy of the Hardy County Commission, the HCEAA Board of Directors, the Operational Liaison, and then the three ambulance entities, West Hardy, Baker, and Wardensville Volunteer Rescue Squad.
The operating procedures section listed the roles and responsibilities of each entity listed in the chart.
A major change that had occurred this year lay in reducing the number of Board meetings from monthly to quarterly. More of the business of the Board would be handled by different committees meeting regularly, but not in public.
Lisa Twigg from West Hardy shared that, despite initial misgivings, she now preferred the new arrangement, explaining that the new format was “more productive.”
Another change made was changing Nathan Kesner’s role from assistant director to operational supervisor. Board members discussed the technicalities of ensuring that they followed proper procedures in doing so, with the main point being that Kesner’s role would be defined as being under Alt’s supervision outside that of the Board.
Further discussion centered on the creation of committees to focus on auditing, updating the bylaws, and planning. Schretrom explained the role of the planning committee as setting up one year, three year, and five year plans to guide Board decision making and establish goals. Further discussions centered on the composition of the committees with a determination to finalize those in the July quarterly meeting.
