Town of Princeton, MA
Meeting Minutes
Public Safety Committee
October 19, 2010
Town Hall Annex
Chairman Sulmasy called the meeting to order at 7:02 PM. Members present were Jim Comer, Bill Dino, Stan Moss, Bob Sauer, Charlie Schmohl, and Neil Sulmasy. Member Jon Fudeman was absent. Also attending were Selectman Edie Morgan, Police Chief Michele Powers, Fire Chief Ray LaPorte, and Town Administrator John Lebeaux.
Acceptance of Minutes
The Committee unanimously voted to accept the minutes of October 13, 2010.
Hear Presentation and Discuss Current Status and Goals: Police Chief Powers
Chief Powers distributed a packet of materials (attached). She responded in detail to a series of questions posed in advance by the committee (attached).
In response to a question regarding the town joining a regional dispatch program, she informed the Committee that increasing the part-time administrative assistant to a full-time position would not provide adequate hours to assume all the administrative tasks currently performed by the dispatchers. She estimated that dispatchers devote approximately 30% of their time to administrative tasks.
Chief Powers also noted that Princeton’s compensation for her department is at the low end in comparison to the region and that other towns offer other working conditions that Princeton does not. She cited as an example Holden officers being allowed to exercise an hour at the end of every shift as paid time.
Hear Presentation and Discuss Current Status and Goals: Fire Chief LaPorte
Chief LaPorte related that the call Fire/EMS department model is motivated more by non-monetary values than by salary. He characterized the Department as strong, but acknowledged that staffing challenges exist. He emphasized his opinion that the current stipend system that provides an on-call Paramedic be duplicated for an on-call EMT to make it much more likely that the Town has the minimum staffing component to provide an ALS transport.
He also related that PFD/EMS has an excellent relationship with the dispatch operation. Chief LaPorte saw no existing problems with the present dispatch operation.
Chief LaPorte stated that various ongoing administrative tasks (payroll, inspectional service, and training) have been delegated to senior officers. He discussed services that are not being offered or offered adequately: Safe in Schools (done on a volunteer basis), inspectional services are as good as resources allow but are deficient, PFD can’t staff to provide a Rapid Intervention Team (RIT Team) because of budgetary concerns.)
The Chief reviewed various capital needs including replacing the ambulance and buying a new truck. He mentioned that he had technical problems sending the Committee his documents in advance of the meeting and would do so quickly thereafter (attached).
He summarized his report by articulating a goal of two firefighters/EMTs to be available 24/7 and that the Department is currently “ten years behind in the Fire Service”.
Stan inquired as to what is the percentage and raw number of calls to which EMS could not respond in the last twelve months.
There was brief discussion about contracting with a third party like UMass Medical Center to provide Emergency Medical Dispatch services if the town maintained its own dispatch service.
Future Schedule
The Committee will next meet October 27 at which time it will review the various presentations it has heard and set its plan to move ahead
The meeting adjourned at 9:01 PM by unanimous vote.
Respectfully Submitted,
John Lebeaux,
Town Administrator
Referenced Documents
Chief Powers Handout: Chief’s Tasks, Officers/Admin Asst. Tasks, Dispatch Tasks, Call Analysis by Time and Day of Week 2007-2009 for Police, Fire, EMS, Animal Control, DPW, PMLD.
Chief Powers, Notes for Response to Committee questions from 10/5 meeting
Chief LaPorte Materials: Report on EMS Field Experiments, September 2010; five bar graphs indicating Fire/EMS incidents by time of day and day of week for 1/05-12/09 and 1/10-6/10; three photographs of EMS response to motor vehicle accident.
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