MVFD Board Members Surprised By Approval Of New Bylaws

By VERNON ROBISON

Moapa Valley Progress

A set of new bylaws governing the Moapa Valley Fire District (MVFD) were passed without discussion in a consent agenda vote before the Clark County Commission on September 18.

The timing of the vote came as a surprise to MVFD board members as well as rank and file volunteers at local fire stations. That is because the bylaws had not yet been brought before the MVFD board for review or approval.

The fact that new bylaws were being drafted was no surprise to MVFD officials. In an August 21 town hall meeting hosted in Overton by County Commissioner Marilyn Kirkpatrick, the Commissioner emphasized that the district bylaws needed to be overhauled.

Over the past year, there has been a push by local fire station chiefs to bring greater autonomy and independence to the district, and to provide more consistent emergency medical services. Kirkpatrick said that, in order for that to happen, the bylaws needed to include an expanded board of directors for the district and an appointed paid fire chief to oversee day-to-day management of the district and its three stations.

In the town hall meeting, Kirkpatrick suggested that other changes may be needed as well. She said that she had county staff working on a draft of new bylaws. But the document was still incomplete at the time and not yet ready to be made public, she said.

Kirkpatrick pledged that she would be bringing the final draft to the MVFD board for review once it was complete. But the MVFD board held its regular monthly meeting on September 10. Neither Kirkpatrick nor her staff was in attendance at that meeting and there was no mention of the bylaws.

“It is kind of discouraging that we weren’t included in this,” said Moapa Station #72 Chief Ron Leachman. “Ever since that town hall meeting, we have had no communication about any of this. It is just kind of sad. I don’t really know what to do about it.”

In fact, most of the changes made to the bylaws were expected. The district board was expanded as promised. In addition to the three station chiefs and a representative chosen from each local town advisory board, two other community members will be appointed to the board.

In addition, the bylaws allow for a district chief to be appointed as a part time interim position between now and the end of the current fiscal year. After that, the position may become permanent by recommendation of the MVFD board and final approval of the County Commission.

But there were several items, that MVFD board members felt had been agreed upon but not reflected in the new bylaws. Chief among them were details of a new pay-per-call program proposed by the MVFD board.

This program was meant to address an ongoing problem of lackluster recruiting of new MVFD volunteers. Over the past year, the MVFD chiefs had developed a plan to provide incentives to volunteers by providing a stipend to be paid per call. The proposal approved by the local board had created a graduated pay scale based on the expertise and training required for each call.

The plan proposed that standard fire calls be paid at $10. Basic EMTs would receive $15 per call. Advanced EMTs would receive $30 and Paramedics would be paid $45 per call. These numbers had been approved by a vote of the board and presented to the Commissioner for inclusion in the bylaws.

But the new bylaws document reduced those amounts significantly; specifically on the higher, more specialized calls. Advanced EMT calls were reduced to $20 per call. Paramedics were shaved to $30 per call.

Overton Station #74 Chief Steve Neel said that seeing these changes made, without explanation, was discouraging. “We had done quite a bit of research on those amounts,” Neel said. “We didn’t just pull the numbers out of thin air. We looked at the going rate for pay-per-call around the region and tried to put ours somewhere in the ballpark.”

Neel fears that the lower amounts will not provide the incentive needed for already-qualified Advanced EMTs and Paramedics in the community to come forward and volunteer their time.
“It is also tough on morale for our volunteers,” Neel said. “The board passed something already that promised one thing, and then it suddenly turns out significantly different from what was promised – all without even consulting the board about it.”

Another item not resolved by the new bylaws involved loosening up of previous rules governing who could serve as station chiefs. Previous bylaws required chiefs to live within the geographical area of their assigned station. MVFD board members had recommended that the new bylaws take away the boundary requirement.
“We are not sure why that wasn’t in there with the new bylaws,” Neel said.

Finally, board members had requested that a provision be included allowing for volunteers to serve from outside of the MVFD boundaries. This would allow residents of Las Vegas and other communities, who wanted experience running emergency calls, to come out for periods of time and volunteer at local stations.

Neel pointed out that the district currently has a volunteer who comes regularly from Las Vegas for periods of 2-3 days at a time to staff the Moapa station.
“This program was actually presented to us by the rural division of Clark County Fire Department,” Neel said. “It could potentially help our staffing a little and we could probably recruit more through it. But for some reason it wasn’t included in the bylaws either.”

No one was sure why the bylaws had differed in these key points from what the MVFD board members had expected.

Commissioner Marilyn Kirkpatrick was unable to respond to multiple calls for comment from the Progress last week. Kirkpatrick’s community liasion Janice Ridondo, however, explained that Kirkpatrick had had a particularly busy week in making preparations for the County’s October 1 memorial services.

Ridondo said that some of the items might have been simply overlooked in the document. These could easily be addressed by presenting an amended bylaws document to the commission at a future date.
“There were several things that we will fix and then re-present it to the board for approval,” Ridondo said.

The local board members allowed that the discrepancies may have been simple clerical errors made in the final document.
“Those kinds of things can be fixed and that’s fine,” Neel said. “The main problem is that we haven’t had any communication about any of this. We don’t know if these were clerical errors or if they were things that the commissioner just didn’t like that we had agreed upon. That makes it especially difficult for us.”