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| Timberline Fire Authority hires attorney |
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| Written by administrator | |
| Wednesday, 30 September 2009 | |
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Barbara Lawlor GILPIN COUNTY For the past couple of months, the Timberline Fire Authority has been interviewing and considering the applications of several attorneys. Last week they agreed to hire Linda Alexander of Collins, Cockrel & Cole. Alexander will be the legal force guiding the authority towards the merger between Colorado Sierra and High Country Fire Departments. Alexander began her presentation with a series of questions regarding what ground the board members had already covered. She told them: “You are already on the path. You have a functional consolidation but have yet to go through the legal process.” In 2008, Alexander worked with Skyline Fire to enter a long-term IGA with the City and County of Denver for fire service. It was a lengthy public process dealing with the fact that the two agencies resided in different counties, which is the case with TFA. Although it didn’t involve an election, it still took seven months to complete. Alexander’s partner Bob Cole was involved with the Parker/South Metro fire authority creation. Her other partner Jim Collins has consolidated several Eagle County districts, and Micki Wadhams has assisted in countless inclusions, exclusions, dissolutions and consolidations. The combined experience will be an asset in wading through the complexities of dealing with two counties and holding two elections. Collins, Cockrel & Cole have been around for 40 years said Alexander, her specialty being fire issues. She said the legal cost to process a consolidation and elections would be in the range of $40,000 to $50,000. She says this cost could escalate to up to $70,000 if the election is a TABOR election or if the mail lists are faulty. A dissolution/inclusion and elections would be from $30,000 to $40,000 and could escalate up to $60,000. A consolidation would involve a lot of ‘ifs’ says Alexander. What if one county votes yes and the other no? If the ballot issue is approved, then the TFA board will have to decide what to do about a new board at that time. She also said it will be the present board’s job to get the "whys" out to the public before the election. “There are so many variables, depending on how much you want us to work. If the only concern is how much it will cost, you should go with the dissolution/inclusion process. The problem with that, however, is the emotional, morale issue. If folks end up feeling bad, that could be a problem.” Alexander told the board members that they were negotiating their own destiny and that they needed to trust each other. She explained that if Colorado Sierra were to dissolve and be included with High Country, it would be easy after that to change the name and become a whole new department, that a public election would not be needed to become Timberline. Treasurer Chris Schimanskey reported that there was $4,132.23 in the bank. He also reported that the Colorado Sierra Cadet Program started last month and so far there are three applicants. “We have lowered the age requirement to 16 and have reached an agreement with Nederland High School that participants can receive one credit for every 15 hours of training.” TFA facilitator Don Taylor reported that a workshop/retreat on Sept. 12 was highly successful, with four board members and a fire chief establishing goals: a time line, a code of ethics and the decision to appoint goal leaders. “After five hours of open discussion, we arrived on common ground,” says Taylor. “And in some cases, we agreed to disagree. There is a lot of work to be done by next July and the cost will be based on the efforts of the key players: how much work will be done by the board and the chiefs.” Taylor said the board had asked him to be more forceful in prodding them into getting things done, now. Colorado Sierra Chief and TFA Co-Chief Ryan Roberts began the chief’s report with the announcement of the birth of his daughter Autumn Snow Roberts. He continued, saying that the chiefs have been working on the issue of training requirements and trying to answer the question of how many hours should volunteers put into each category. “We are looking at specialization and trying to come up with a reasonable solution. Some people are more comfortable with wildland fires versus structure fires. Is two hours of hazmat training enough? It’s not easy and will be a new way of looking at training. The current hour requirement is 48 hours a year, or four hours a month.” Chris Schimanskey reported that there has been talk of disbanding the TFA co-chiefs and going to one chief and one assistant chief, to be rotated after a determined amount of months. Chief Roberts said, “I think it’s a good idea. That would be one more step towards being one department.” The board discussed the future. Board member Paul Britton asked for some sort of indication of the stations needs five years from now. Chief Roberts suggested that the brush truck is not necessary on many of the calls, that a pickup truck would do and alleviate the wear and tear on the equipment. Next on the agenda was the post-consolidation board structure discussion. It was suggested that the department start out with a seven-member board until the first election in 2012 and then reduce the board to five members. It was added that there were to be no chiefs or paid employees on the board. There will be a formal recommendation at the next meeting. Rittenhouse suggested that some or all of the present board members should be on the consolidated board because of the learning curve that would be allowed. The board adjourned to executive session to discuss the hiring of an attorney and announced their decision to go with Linda Alexander when they reconvened. |
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| Last Updated ( Wednesday, 07 October 2009 ) |
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