Fire board to move meetings to town hall
The Fort Myers Beach Fire Control District Board of Fire Commissioners unanimously approved moving their regular 2011 monthly meetings to town hall at their December meeting on Tuesday, Dec. 21. The board meets each third Tuesday at 7 p.m.
The fire commissioners also agreed to hold a monthly workshop at Fire Station #31 each second Tuesday of the month at 10 a.m. The workshops would involve open discussions among the commissioners, but no voting decisions would be allowed. The public is invited to attend both sessions.
Both meetings will begin taking effect in January of 2011. The town hall meetings will be televised on government access channel 98 and no charge will be afforded to the fire district. The FMB Fire Board will have to provide an IT guy to help with the former service.
“Since we are already putting out the schedule (daily newspaper notice) for the year, we want to minimize the need to put separate meetings in if we want to have other meetings,” said Commission Chairperson Carol Morris.
The public has been critical of the local fire board in the past when it comes to public workshops and their budget.
“I think that we did not have workshop meetings in the past, and that it contributed to a lot of individual meetings involving individual commissioners and the chief,” said Morris. “That’s a waste of the chief’s time, and it tends to fly in the face of what the Sunshine Law manual does say.”
Budgetary concerns would be the main reason for the workshops, according to Morris. Since voting is not allowed at these types of meetings, the fire board attorney is not needed.
“We should be starting long before the budget process to be looking at some of these areas,” she said. “I really feel that we have a lot of work to do and a lot of things to discuss, and the public might be more relaxed in a workshop than they would in a formal meeting.
“We are commissioners, and we do have an obligation to this taxing district. I don’t think we have given our public enough opportunity to provide input.”
Before the meeting and agenda item to consider, Chief Mike Becker met with Town Manager Terry Stewart to check if council chambers was cleared for the fire board and administrative personnel to use for regular monthly meetings. The only conflict falls in January. The fire board will meet on Wednesday, Jan. 19, at 7 p.m. instead.
“The dates are pretty good with the town,” said Becker. “The financial reports are one of the reasons we moved back to the third week of the month, because we are trying to get accurate financial statements for you. We will be in position to show call data, potential items that will be facing you and a preliminary report.”
Regarding the workshops, the fire commissioners chose a daytime session to save costs for the fire district.
“It would appear feasible for costs to having the workshops during the day,” said Becker.
The different meetings times may also aid residents who either work days or night and may be interested in the fire board dealings but unable to attend.
“By having a workshop at a different time, we can get public input from a new group of people who potentially couldn’t attend one meeting or the other,” said Commissioner Ted Schindler.
The fire commissioners will meet twice in January 2011. Their first workshop -which may involve freezing total fire fighter positions- will be held at Station #31 on Tuesday, Jan. 11, at 10 a.m., while their regular meeting will be held at town hall on Wednesday, Jan. 19, at 7 p.m.