MCEMS amends bi-laws for audit

Image
Body

The Marshall County Emergency Medical Service District Board of Control conducted a special board meeting on February 27. The meeting was called to discuss and take action on appointing a minutes clerk, amending the bi-laws, and discussing the cash balances on the budget.

After the Board Director Darren Alexander thanked everybody for attending, they went right into the business of appointing the minutes clerk. Board member Roy Methany said that Kim Adair showed interest in taking the position and recommended her because of her extensive background. She has a master’s degree in Business Administration and 20-years-experience as an RN. The board unanimously voted her into the position.

Once Adair took her spot to begin taking minutes of the meeting, the board slid into the next item up for discussion and action; updating the bi-laws per a recommendation from an Oklahoma State Auditor’s Office.

At the February 6 meeting, the chairman informed the public that the MCEMS was audited for 2018 and 2019. The audit highlighted areas that needed to be fixed, and the bi-laws were part of that list.

Alexander took that moment to address some of the public’s concerns about how the board voted in the past.

“A few people brought up the fact that not all members were voting,” Alexander said.

Alexander said that he has been following the board’s bi-laws. It states that the chairman abstains from voting and only votes to break a tie.

However, they recently learned that the Oklahoma Open Meetings Act states that all members must vote. Alexander said that he is a member of the board, so he will begin to vote.

The board began analyzing the bi-laws and discussing ways to improve them.

Board member Elizabeth Wainwright noticed that bi-laws only showed the mailing address for MCEMS, and suggested adding the physical address. The other members agreed.

One major point of the discussion was about terms of members and term limits. The definitions for the term limits and when appointments should occur was a little muddled. The board amended the wording to something more understandable.

The language they agreed on was, “All members shall have staggered terms of one-year separations with no more than two consecutive terms of five years.”

This sparked a discussion how the current offices were not aligned with that idea due to the fact that some members filled unexpired terms. Alexander stated they might need to make a few adjustments to get back in sync with the staggered terms.

The natural progression from being appointed is of course, resignations. The bi-laws had anybody wanting to resign submit their letters of resignation to the board and the board votes on it at the following meeting. The board realized this was a moot point because by law, the letters of resignation must be given to the Marshall County Board of Commissioners and they vote on accepting the resignation.

The board decided to amend that particular bi-law to reflect the appointments of board members and resignations being handled by the Board of Commissioners.

After amending the resignations, the board shifted to how to handle public comments. Methany suggested limiting the time to three to five minutes and adding it to the bottom of the agenda. Wainwright disagreed.

“If we’re going to have a policy on public comments, I think it needs to be a paragraph itself,” Wainwright rebutted.

Then, they tried to figure out the best way to distribute the information. That is when Methany suggested adding it to the add, “Persons wishing to address the board on a specific agenda item will need to do so in writing prior to the start of the meeting and should hold comments short and direct to the item.”

Chris Duroy County Commissioner for District Three and the current Chairman of the Board of Commissioners agreed with Methany’s idea for adding it to the bottom of the agenda.

Alexander and Methany became enthralled with a deep discussion about what needs to be added to the Policies and Procedures Manual.

Wainwright spoke up, and brought everybody back to the task at hand.

“I think it’s 7:30 and I’d like to eat dinner before midnight,” Wainwright said playfully. “Maybe we could talk about that either later, once we had time to think it over, or at another meeting.”

The meeting ended on a financial note, because the final agenda item was discussing the budget. Methany noted that they needed to figure out a way to reappropriate funds because some of the line item budgets were already dangerously close to being at the limit.

The phone budget is already at 69% for the fiscal year, and laundry is at 80%.

Methany had suggestions on how to shift money from one budget to another to be able to make the fiscal year and still be in budget.

Dash Stanley, the Interim MCEMS Director said he would type up everything and present it when they meet Thursd March 5 for their regular meeting.