The meeting began with a budget presentation by Steve Walker, who is the Emergency Services Director.
The requested budget is $11,549,745. This is a $387,489 increase.
This increase is due to fuel, maintenance, and equipment pricing.
No new positions are being requested.
That presentation is attached.

There was a brief report on the new Saint Marys County Code Blue Plan.
This will be utilized during extreme weather events to prioritize responses when the system is overwhelmed or unable to respond.
It also describes the process to be used if the decision has to be made to not dispatch any units due to unsafe weather conditions.
That plan is attached.

Next was a report on the Harris radio system. The system is functioning well. A few incidents have occurred but the backup systems have worked well and issues resolved.

- An incident occurred where dispatchers could not dispatch calls on the Fire Main channel. The dispatch supervisor acted quickly and activated contingency plans to ensure that there was no disruption of service. Harris found that a section of disc on the server was full. A programming change was made to ensure this will not happen in the future.

- There was a malfunction of the UPS backup power at the Mechanicsville Tower. The site went into bypass and routed traffic seamlessly to other towers as designed. There was no reported loss or impact to service. The issue was active for 12 hours before it was caught. The UPS has since been replaced.

- On February 3rd 2020 the UPS was replaced in the 911 backup center. When the system was powered back on both 911 phone systems for the backup, and the main 911 center failed. The contingency plan was activated and 911 trunk lines were transferred to Charles County. Several dispatchers went to their 911 center during the outage to assist with call taking, relaying back to the SMC 911 center to dispatch the units.
The malfunction was caused by the software in the backup center reverting to a default setting. This caused data to be sent to both the main and backup 911 centers and created system conflict and failure. A follow up with Verizon showed no 911 calls were missed during this time.

A report on new projects was next.

- Bi Directional Antennas have been installed in schools to improve radio communications inside buildings. The data feed cables are currently being installed and they should be live within 30 days.
- Marine Band VHF communications are being installed on the Leonardtown Tower. This should be completed by March 30.
- New Harris Radio consoles have been installed in the backup center, the ones in the main center will be replaced soon.

Steve Walker reported that the final draft of the RFP has been completed. There will be a final review by Fire/EMS/Police before it is posted on the E Maryland Marketplace.

The EMS operational program manager position is still vacant, they are in the final stages of the selection process.

Commissioners approached legislative delegation to look at language in tax law for collecting fire and emergency services tax.
There is language that says tax revenue that exceeds the needs of the departments shall be used to reduce the emergency services tax for the next year.
historically interpreted that other department revenues, donation, fundraising could be used to offset tax dollars.
The proposed change is changing the wording from shall to may to match current practices.
the commissioners have never suggested touching any of those funds. As things change in the future those funds will be needed more than ever and the wording change would ensure the county cannot take funds back.
The Fireboard association recommended the line be removed all together
The Ambulance / Rescue Squad association supported the amendment as is.
The ESB needs to have a recommendation for the Commissioners, a lengthy discussion ensued.

A motion was made to approve deleting the entire language of the line, but if the county attorney and legislative delegation did not think that was feasible, the ESB would also support changing the language from "shall" to "may".
A copy of that bill is attached.

The reimbursement dollar amount for dependent care has increased to $10 per hour per dependent. This allows for county volunteers to make time to volunteer without having to worry about the financial burden of child care. No volunteers have utilized the program yet.
A short presentation on the Employee Assistance Program followed.

A letter from the Lexington Park VRS was presented with concerns about the equipment billing process from Medstar Saint Mary's Hospital. They are currently facing a $110,00 charge for this issue.

"St. Mary's Hospital for a long time provided supplies to the Emergency Services through the community benefit program. In 2014, they started giving us statements and told us we were not responsible for paying them, that they were using for tracking purposes. This year there is a new executive in charge of billing that wasn't aware of this and is holding Emergency Services responsible. They have been working with SMH leadership but there has yet to be a resolution."
A short term resolution seems to be that the hospital will be absorbing the debt but changes for this process in the future are being evaluated. A copy of the letter is attached.

The 2019 ESB Annual report was approved and will be presented to the Commissioners.
That report is attached.

One person spoke during public comment and recommended that the ESB update their annual report to include the items required by the copy of the 2018 bylaws.