Video: Evergreen Fire Board Recall Candidates public meeting

Many thanks to Sharon Trilk for her efforts in making this video posible for the community and Evergreen fire district voters, including processing the video into the wee hours and carefully indexing the questions shown below so you can easily locate the answers.

We hope the video will help inform your decision on whether these candidates have the experience and connection to the community to replace our current board.

[youtube:3n9g1bq4][/youtube:3n9g1bq4]

Evergreen Fire Recall Presentation 4.3.13
134 in attendance
Presentation is on website

Introduction by moderator, Jim Sherwood
Agenda

Presentation by Koller
Who Are We
What The Recall is All About
Burn building triggered recall
Responsible from Community Perspective?
Responsible from Training Perspective?
Responsible from Financial Perspective?
Responsible from Best Practices Perspective?
Responsible? Industrial Class A Burn Building
Responsible? Monitoring of Response Times
-Rural Standard 14min, requirement to meet standards is 80% of time
Graph values:
2006 63%
2007 58%
2008 62%
2009 55%
2010 67%
2011 64%
2012 55%

Structure fires
2006 58%
2007 39%
2008 55%
2009 29%
2010 67%
2011 29%
2012 33%

What do these times mean?
Evaluation of results?

Evidence of Monitoring?

@27:55 Questions for candidates
@30:00
1. How would you realistically improve fire call response times?
@32:33
2. Are you prepared to undergo a recall election in 6 months if you get elected?
@33:01
3. Have there been complaints about the response times from the community?
@33:27
4. What is the required number of people to respond to a fire? What qualifies you to make this assumption?
@34:32
5. What are your intentions for formulating a long term Master Plan for the district and how will you fund it?
@35:45
6. What will you do with the new training building since it already paid for and delivered?
@39:08
7. The deputy chief said the volunteers don't want to work for you, that you have insulted the volunteers pretty strongly especially in your green flyer we received in the mail yesterday. Do you believe all volunteers will stay? How will you rebuild trust and morale in volunteers who stay? How will you expect to recruit new volunteers?
@41:47
8. Have any of you served on a board of directors that has handled a budget the size of EFPD?
@42:40
9. All candidates will you submit to a background check and if not why?
@44:55
10. Why recall the entire board instead of asking for a recall of the board leadership (ie board president) causing less destruction?
@46:37
11. How long have you wanted to help run an emergency rescue organization?
@47:17
12. Will you build needed large cisterns in remote areas that lack water and how will you pay for them?
@47:53
13. You've been quoted as saying you will replace the fire chief if elected, what are your plans for the paid staff?
@48:59
14. How do you convince me you don't want a paid department? How will you pay for it?
@49:56
15. This great community is now extremely divided, how do you propose to heal our wounds?
@51:36
16. Mr. Koller, can you please comment on your Intentions to tear down the burn building?
@52:15
17. Why was your organization opposed to a debate?
@53:03
18. Why should we completely disrupt the leadership of EFPD to put you in office? How will this be better for us, the Evergreen citizens?
@53:55
19. You have not mentioned any issues other than the burn building, What are you proposing for the rest of the organization? The current board supports this.
@55:22
20. If I vote yes, am I voting to get rid of the fire department? If not, why is the literature saying Save the Fire Department, Vote No on Recall? Who is paying for permit #111, send out these cards, who is paying for the banners, the t-shirts, etc?
@56:46
21. If the original objection is for appearance of the building and smoke, why are those items simply no longer being discussed?
@58:18
22. With an election every other year, how do you justify an expensive election recall when the May 2012 election was unopposed and the May 2014 election only a year away?
@1:01:35
23. How many (EFPD) board meetings have each of you been to?
@1:03:00
24. If 100% of the volunteer fire fighters support the board, what is in the community's best interest?
@1:04:05
25. When you fail in this recall election, are you going to concede respectfully or are you going to continue to make the lives of the fire department difficult?
@1:06:22
26. To best protect my family, neighbors, and home why should I replace this experienced board with substantial firefighting, life saving experience for four board members, 3 with no experience and one with experience from 15 years ago?
@1:07:30
27. Jodi: You have stated that the potential board would make the training better for the volunteers, please explain.
@1:08:52
28. Do you propose to allow wildfire training in the district?
@1:09:40
29. What is making you pursue this aggressive action, rather than work with the board to resolve this?
@1:10:29
30. How was Jodi fighting fires in New York in the 90s when she claimed to live here?
@1:12:20
31. Would you be running for office if the new training facility wasn't being built?
@1:13:13
32. Didn't the citizens initially vote to build the burn building on a previous mill levy?
@1:14:23
33. How are you going to improve response times in this rural area?
@1:14:44
32. What is the fundamental difference between a 501c3 and 501c4 nonprofit?
@1:15:15
33. How are you planning to implement training down the hill?
@1:16:50
34. If this building were being built in Kittredge, near businesses there, what would be your level of involvement? Would you still be trying to recall the existing board if the training building wasn't in your back yard?
@1:18:48
35. How close do each of you live to the new facility?
@1:19:38
36. You spoke of the current board lacking diversity, what kind of diversity do you four bring when you are all from the same neighborhood?
@1:20:29
37. I do not feel anyone addressed the question of how anyone would improve response times. How would you improve response times?
@1:23:15
38. What if any points would the present board need to concede or agree in order for you to drop the recall?
@1:23:55
39. I was told by your group that the other side would be here, they are not. Why?
@1:25:54
40. You talk about NFPA 1720, and our time on scene. Most calls involve the first responder who is on the scene within 5 minutes? these responders have saved lives and averted structure fires. How do your numbers factor into that?
@1:27:25
41. You claim the present board threatens the quality of life by the training facility, how does burning 12 times per year for 3 hours threaten life and justify a recall?
@1:28:34
42. You've repeated general complaints about safety, why are you ignoring the conclusions of the school board, school principal at Bergen Meadow and Bergen Valley and Jefferson County Planning that have no safety concerns?
@1:33:44
43. Are you prepared to go through the next academy beginning in September to be better prepared to represent this (couldn't understand last word)?
@1:34:07
44. You say that you support the fire fighters, yet you are convinced the firefighters are building a building that harm people and property. Do you realize firefighters volunteer every day to protect life and property that this building would not hurt?
@1:35:38
45. Most of us move to Evergreen because of its beauty and outdoor environment, can't you surrender 3 hours a month to increase training for our firefighters? Probably those 3 hours will be less disruptive than the crowd noise from the ball fields that are even closer to your homes and are used for several hours every day in the summer. Volunteers give more than 3 hours of their time every month, why can't you just ignore the 3 hours of fire training per month. Smoke is no longer an issue, it is fireplace smoke.
@1:36:40
46. Actually an industrial hygienist approved the use of Froggy's Fog, but the board agreed to change to burning wood only, as one of 21 mitigations they've agreed to so far. What concessions did your group make to compromise?
@1:39:00
47. Question for Jodi: Please tell us about your firefighting experience.

@1:41:45 end of question period
@1:42:30 adjournment

For more information from the Recall Candidates, go to: http://efpdboardrecall.org/
For more information from the No-Recall Support Group, go to: http://no-recall.org/

You ROCK thank you so much from all the businesses that support the NO-Recall effort!

Not the recall but the great job both sites did.

[marquee:3jvsgzfq]THANK YOU SHARON! [/marquee:3jvsgzfq] :notworthy:

I really appreciate all the info that has been made available here and the other local message boards, most especially the video from last night. I may be out of town, but that doesn't mean we haven't been following the entire sorry mess this recall has become. I hope our ballots are forwarded in time to get them mailed back.....then we will await the results, only a resounding defeat of the recall will be acceptable.