There were a couple Fire Department related action items voted on during the 02/23/2022 Safety and Licensing Committee meeting.
The first was the Auto-Aid Addendum with the Neenah/Menasha Fire Rescue.
Fire Chief Jeremy Hansen said his department was really happy to have this pack up and running. It had been entirely outside of their control that the computer-aided dispatch (CAD) system chosen for Outagamie County had turned out to not interface well with the CAD system used in Winnebago County. They had been working on correcting that issue for the last three and a half years, and were now happy to have the program back up and running.
The committee members had no questions and voted unanimously to approve the auto-aid addendum.
The next item was the Urban Search and Rescue Contract.
Chief Hansen said this was another piece of exciting news. The Appleton Fire Department had been a part of this team for a decade or more. Due to concerns about the contract they ended up letting the contract expire.
After three years of legislative work by the State Fire Chiefs Association, Governor Evers signed Act 104 into law back in December of 2021 and all of those legislative changes became a part of the urban search and rescue response services contract.
As a side note, Chief Hansen mentioned that they just renewed their hazmat contract a few months ago. That contract included language that pulled in the new legislation immediately. Those changes related to disability, workers comp, and timely reimbursement were now all retroactively a part of the contract they had signed.
He was excited to get the urban search and rescue team up and running again. He mentioned that members of the Wisconsin Urban Search and Rescue Task Force had received a call from the Department of Criminal Investigations to go up to Sturgeon Bay and shore up the building that had recently been destroyed by fire so that the investigation into that fire could be completed.
Alderperson Katie Van Zeeland (District 5) asked if this was the group that had experienced issues with timely reimbursement in the past.
Chief Hansen answered that it was. The new legislation that had been passed allowed them to be reimbursed within either 45 or 60 days. He could not remember off the top of his head which number it was. [It looks like the act would require local agencies to be reimbursed within 60 days after they have submitted a complete application for reimbursement if the agency applies for that reimbursement within 45 days of the conclusion of the deployment of a regional emergency response team.]
They sent a group down to Florida in response to Hurricane Irma and it took them just over two years to get reimbursed for that. Likewise, after they responded to the Didion Milling explosion in central Wisconsin, it took almost 18 months to get reimbursed.
Another interesting change was that, in the past they would get reimbursed if a person was found to be at fault, but now they can get reimbursed by the state whether or not the state can find a party at fault which was particularly beneficial for situations involving natural disasters given that you can’t sue Mother Nature. Now they will get their funds back regardless.
Alderperson Van Zeeland asked if he thought all of the issues had been ironed out with this new legislation.
He answered that he thought they had and he was very happy with the legislation that had been passed.
None of the other committee members had any questions and they voted unanimously to approve the contract.
View full meeting details and video here: https://cityofappleton.legistar.com/MeetingDetail.aspx?ID=913979&GUID=1F45D625-A395-4F0C-984D-3C6DF96B819B
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