Dear Readers,

Last night the Board voted 6/1 at agenda item #9  to restrict Chief Stelchuk’s options for meeting OCMCA’s 2- medics per ambulance staffing requirements to

• scheduling paid-on-call volunteers,
• hiring part-time personnel or
• using Star ambulance.

No additional full-time hiring is allowed.

Numerous residents and fire department members expressed grave concerns compared to the better option of hiring full-time people.  One resident and former volunteer OTFD member termed the motion “disgusting”. The Fire Chief Paul Strelchuk and Assistant Chief Lou Danek  were silent, leaving their opinions unknown. Consider for yourself what that means.

A very dangerous aspect of last night’s decision will be if we allow the lack of transparency shown to stand and become the norm.  I will not go down the somewhat pointless path of debating fine points of whether the Michigan Open Meeting Act was violated in reaching this decision. (The Open Meetings Act requires deliberations/discussions toward a decision to be made in public with some exceptions.  I assume the notice from OCMCA was interpreted as “litigation”, one of the legal exceptions allowing a closed meeting to deliberate.   I assume the total “official” deliberating was in the 6 PM closed session. What are the chances that there was no significant secret non-public deliberation behind the scenes before the 6 PM meeting? I say, zero chance. Do you really believe 6 people, who are known to argue extensively about far less important matters, became united in one hour about what to do?)

I will instead submit to the Court of Public Opinion the claim that residents expect and deserve a much higher level of transparency.

• No Board member who voted YES had any questions about the motion; It appeared to me that  the 6 totally understood the motion and had thoroughly reviewed it before it was made

• Supervisor Bailey, who voted NO, had questions. Hurray for him and his 30 years Township experience and significant engineering background in safety risk analysis.
• There was no professional information or data comparing the motion to any other options for cost, speed of compliance or any other factors whatsoever
• The Chief and Assistant Chief and Township Manager offered no public input whatsoever and were not asked to.
• The agenda item was billed as a “discussion”. There was little discussion of any significance. Only a motion to ram through regardless of public opinion or input. (A misleading agenda, even no agenda at all,  is perfectly legal for a regular meeting, unfortunately.)

I think the path of this motion was chosen by a board of 6 well-meaning people who do not realize how dangerously uninformed they are about OTFD, fire, EMS, emergencies and risk analysis in general.

To remedy this we must help them to become properly informed or replace them with those who are.  We need them to be reviewing performance data each month that tracks compliance and each concern expressed about this plan.  We need detailed reports on any incidents and their cause, such as the recent ambulance auto accident with patients aboard, or any failures to follow protocols properly. They need to understand that their past response time data is falsely low and how and why. We need to teach them a more sophisticated risk analysis model than “We can’t see any big problems,  so all is OK”.

Please help  OTFD to the extent you can and are willing to.

Bob Yager – Oakland Township Sentinel – Public Safety Editor