On Monday night I attended my very first meeting of the Lake St. Louis Fire Protection District. So did a lot of other people. It was quite a meeting. I arrived at 6:00 for a 6:30 meeting and people were already filing in. We had been alerted of some issues by State Senator Bob Onder and State Rep Justin Hill, both of whom are Lake St. Louis residents and represent the city in the Missouri legislature.
I am a little bit embarrassed that this was the first Fire Protection District meeting I have attended. Readers of this blog know that I try to be active and encourage people to attend local meetings in our community and I was remiss in neglecting the Fire District. Well, no longer.
School Board meetings usually have people interested in specific issues who will show up. Board of Alderman meetings are not quite as popular. Sometimes I feel like the only one there that is not employed by the city. But apparently Fire District meetings are even worse than that. Senator Onder attended the meeting before last, and Rep. Hill attended the last meeting. By the way, that is why we love and support those guys. They care about the community.
They contacted a few of us and we gathered to attend Monday night. We filled all the chairs, brought in folding chairs and filled those, and then filled up the rest with a standing room only crowd. And the meeting started on schedule at 6:30 pm. At 9:30 I left. They still had not gone over specific budget numbers but I had to go. We spent three hours in a very heated discussion.
I am going to try to present this information in as simple and straightforward manner as I possibly can. I am going to round figures and use some generalities but I promise this information is essentially factual and (I hope) non-biased. I still don’t have all of the information I need, but I have a good general idea of the issues involved and I will try to present that here.
The meeting was contentious and emotional. It is fair to say that nobody is happy. The Board and Chief are not happy. The firefighters are not happy. The citizens were not happy. And I was thoroughly disgusted as well. Attendees will understand when I say that a lot was said in those three hours that was relevant, and a lot was said that was not. But everyone in that room left shaking their heads and nobody is happy with the situation.
A brief summary of the past – The district was formed when the city was, sometime around 1969, as a volunteer fire department. The district covered about 6 square miles. It appears that the district never grew any larger, even though the city has expanded considerably. Two thirds of the City of Lake St. Louis is now covered by the neighboring Wentzville Fire Protection District. The Wentzville Fire Protection District covers about 80 square miles.
A few years ago (6?), after a series of tries the LSL voters approved a measure to fund a “full time” professional fire department. There was some confusion about what that means but we have two fire houses and one of them is manned full time. The other is not.
Lake St. Louis has three fire trucks, two of which are 1998 models and one is a 1992 model. The firefighters say they need new trucks because these will not last forever. I certainly understand this factual concern. I need to check into how long fire trucks last but these need repairs and clearly we will need new trucks at some point. There is other equipment that they say needs attention like our rescue boats and SCBA (self-contained breathing apparatus) that cost money and are needed to keep firefighters safe.
I work with equipment all the time and I know it eventually needs to be replaced. I will reserve final judgment until I investigate the life span of specific pieces of equipment but I will acknowledge that at some point action is needed, and it is probably needed sooner rather than later. On the other hand I am very cheap and do not just buy new cars on credit. We should investigate ways to meet our needs in the most cost effective manner possible, but if the needs are real they will have to be met.
Previous Fire Board Members have declined to use bonds to fund new equipment purchases. This is unusual if you look at other districts and public entities. A bond is of course a loan taken out by taxpayers and paid off with a tax increase approved by voters. Bonds can only be used for specific purposes specified by the bond issue the y vote on.
Bonds are debt. I don’t like debt. But avoiding debt requires a Dave Ramsey mentality not possessed by most voters. If you do not want to incur debt you must pay up front with cash. That cannot happen without a tax increase to “save up” the money for new equipment. Unfortunately it is probably too late for that. After we fix this mess, I want to insist on proper fiscal responsibility going forward.
In addition to not having the money to replace equipment, our Fire Protection District runs a deficit in their operating budget. Since I could not stay to review the numbers I will not be able to comment on specifics but I promise to review and understand the current operating budget and follow up. But either they are spending too much or they do not have enough money coming in. This needs to change.
So far we have outdated equipment that we have no way to replace and an operating budget that is negative each month.
The Lake St. Louis Fire Protection District should have a three member Board elected by citizens. At present they have one elected member and one appointed member on the Board. That is two members, not three, and only one is elected. How that came to be does not matter. State law does not allow the appointment of a third Board member. Why that is does not matter; we can’t do it. There will be an election in April, and new Board members will be elected. The filing period for these positions is from mid-December to mid-January.
Our Fire Chief quit. There are additional details, but they are irrelevant. We do not have a Fire Chief. Because of this vacancy, the Board decided to ask the Wentzville Fire Chief to help out with Lake St. Louis, which he agreed to do. I think they are paying Wentzville $1000 a month for this. It was pointed out that this kind of arrangement should have been put out for bid, so that O’Fallon and other neighboring communities could have bid on it as well. That did not happen.
The District does have reserve funds. I am rounding again but it is about $400,000 that they have in reserve. This money is for emergency needs. We certainly need a reserve, but I will need to look into what a proper level of reserve is for a district like this. I don’t know. The reserve is currently being used to cover our operating budget shortfall. That is of course not good.
Fire trucks cost approximately $500,000. That is of course an approximate number for a new truck. Could we get used trucks, say 2008 vintage? I don’t know. We need to look at the options. How much do we need to properly equip the district? The bond issue thrown around in the meeting was between $4 and $8 million. I don’t know how those figures were arrived at, but will find out.
Lake St. Louis Firefighters make on average $53,000 per year. Wentzville firefighters make on average $75,000 per year. At the meeting it was agreed that LSL firefighters are on the low end of the scale for our region. I will verify this; I don’t know where they fall.
But there are a significant number of volunteer firefighters working for the district. These folks give of their time and help protect the city. They do work with the professional firefighters on calls and help fill in the gaps. I am extremely grateful for these people and their service to our community. Most of them are eager to transition to a paid position, either in Lake St. Louis or elsewhere, and it appears all of our paid firefighters started off as volunteers.
The LSL firefighters have not had a raise in five years. There is a proposal for a one-time $3000 payment to each to help them out with the lack of a raise for several years. There is also discussion of a cost of living raise in salary. Not sure where that stands.
There are various ideas being tossed around to deal with the dilemmas described above. One is a bond issue, which I discussed above. Another is a tax increase. And a third is to dissolve the Lake St. Louis District and have Wentzville take it over.
The third alternative, being taken over by Wentzville, was thoroughly opposed at the meeting. It is fair to say the sentiment was not just no but HELL NO! We want to fix our district, not dissolve it.
Unions were a big part of the discussion. All of the Lake St. Louis Firefighters belong to the union, and I don’t need to tell you they would all be happier with a Wentzville salary, which is $22K higher than what they are making. Unfortunately with a monthly shortfall in the operating budget and a need for new equipment there is no money for an increase. And so for some the idea of a merger with Wentzville was quite popular. That was not true of the audience Monday.
I will try to summarize a lot of discussion in a few sentences here. Many are concerned that public unions are taking over many public board positions and driving up wages and holding communities hostage. We have seen this with the NEA in the Wentzville School District. And the Right to Work issue crept into the discussion Monday night, with a concern about union activities and politics.
Those are valid issues, but the real pressing issue is that this district has been mismanaged for a long time. And on that point there was no disagreement. The current Board was not involved before 2013, with one member appointed in 2015. But the previous board members did not have a good relationship with the Board and proper forward planning did not occur. I was not there so that is all second hand and frankly irrelevant. We have a problem and we need to deal with it.
Before I offer ideas on how to move forward I want to note one other thing that was a big point of discussion. These problems did not just occur. They have been around for some time. I try to be aware of issues in my community and I had no idea about any of this. I am interested and available and I am always reaching out in my community and yet I did not get the message that there was a problem until my friends in the legislature gave me a heads up. Likewise for the other attendees.
When Justin Hill and Bob Onder attended the meetings they were very sparsely attended and the meetings notices not published but taped to the backside of one door. Justin came for one meeting and the door was locked. All of that gives the appearance of secrecy and a lack of transparency which was disturbing to many. I wondered what the discussion would have been about if the crowd had not attended. In the previous two meeting the discussion was apparently about bond issues and taxes and mergers with Wentzville.
It took a few strokes of the keyboard to alert a few activists to the situation and we filled the room. The reason for that is that there are people who care about the community who were simply not informed that there was a problem. It was a mistake to not reach out to the community and ask for involvement.
I propose we all start from scratch. The people of Lake St. Louis should come together and assess our needs and how much we are willing to pay for fire protection and then figure out how to fund it, not just now but twenty years from now. I propose changing the Fire District boundaries to match the boundaries of the city. This will not be easy or simple but I think it is the right thing to do. This will reduce the size of the Wentzville Fire District, and may need some judicial approvals. But now is the time to make this right and there is no reason for Wentzville to cover such as large percentage of Lake St. Louis.
The citizens of Lake St. Louis should consider what level of protection they want and how much they are willing to pay. And then they should vote to fund what they want. We need to elect the right people to the Fire Board to make sure these issues are properly addressed. This does not appear to be rocket science.
Finally, a few notes about the people at the meeting. I have tried to avoid some of the controversial parts of this discussion but this was considerably more contentious than I may have described. I realize a crowd of angry citizens is a daunting thing when you have been used to unattended meetings. The agenda was thrown out the window and what happened was a three hour question and answer free-for-all that did not follow Roberts rules of order. Firefighters answered a lot of questions directly; the Board answered when they could, and the Wentzville Fire Chief interjected a great deal.
I stood at one point and made it clear that we all value the work done by firefighters and recognize the necessity of having someone ready and able to put out a house or car fire or help with a medical emergency. Of course we all value these things and we appreciate the great work these people do saving lives. But the Fire Chief was literally running a commercial of all the value they provide and how critical it was and how much we should appreciate what they do.
Since I work in sales I do not appreciate being sold. It was like a car salesman explaining the extremely high value of his product and how much you should appreciate the shiny chrome. They prefer you buy the more expensive model. We don’t need that. We have problems we have to deal with and don’t need the distraction of a pushy salesman. The Wentzville Chief also went off on the volunteers and how they presented safety risks and sometimes bought a snack or something with district funds. These are volunteers. The Board president later commented that he felt bad all he could offer them was an occasional small reward here and there. Amen to that.
A final word about Board President Mike Pendergast - I had never met any of these folks before this meeting and so had no preconceptions. I came away with a good opinion of Mike. He seemed sincere and he did a pretty good job in a tough situation. I peppered him with questions as did many others and he tried to be fair and open and he genuinely encouraged my participation along with everyone else. Although it was the first time we met he seemed like a good man.
We have a problem here, folks. We need to deal with it and I promise the meetings will be attended from now on. Please get involved and let people know how you feel. There is a meeting on December 15th. If you are interested please consider running for the Fire Board.
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