Is Sagle Fire District simply going, going, gone?

Recently, I was asked to take a look at the Selkirk Fire Rescue EMS website to determine to what extent the administration of the Sagle Fire District had taken to heart citizens’ criticisms regarding lack of transparency and lack of adequate information regarding the day-to-day operations of the Sagle Fire District.

I was told that Selkirk Fire has recently spent money with a professional web designer to give the website a more polished look. In addition, they are paying a monthly fee for website maintenance. It is obvious that the monthly fee is necessary since some parts of the website are clearly still “under construction.” This concerns me since this website is the primary point of contact and information for many, if not most, of the citizens of the Sagle Fire District.

As a citizen served by the Sagle Fire District part of the Selkirk Fire Joint Powers Agreement, I have the following observations to make.

1. Information about the Sagle Fire Board of Commissioners.

Citizens have to drill down two levels before they can get to information on the various boards and councils which, supposedly, oversee the day-to-day operations of Selkirk Fire. By “drill down” I mean that you have to first click on “About Your Department” on the home page, then you have to click on “Board of Commissioners” on the “About Your Department” page. I would have preferred to see the “Board of Commissioners” button on the home page.

2. On to the Funding tab on the “About Your Department” page. When you click on the Funding tab, a single document is available, the 2014-2015 Financial Audit Report. When you click on the link, you are redirected to a PDF file which I downloaded and printed. I haven’t had time to review the “audit” report in detail, but there are a few problems with this “audit” report.

First, this “audit” report only applies to Sagle Fire District and does not, apparently, provide information regarding the funding of the other two political entities — Sandpoint and Westside Fire District — which participate in the JPA.

Second, and most important, if this is an “audit” report where is the name and address of the independent audit firm that conducted the audit? I have worked with many governmental and quasi-governmental organizations, and they all had to be audited each and every year by an independent audit firm. Doesn’t Selkirk Fire have to meet this same requirement?

Third, the title of the two reports included in this “audit” are “Fund Balance Sheet/Statement of Net Position” and “Statement of Government Fund Revenues, Expenditures and Changes in Fund Balance/Statement of Activities.” These are not audit reports. Rather, they look like something you could generate out of Quickbooks for preparing financial statements for an audit or other reporting if, in fact, a real audit was being performed.

Fourth, the information on these reports is incomplete. Throughout the report, references are made to notes that are not included with the reports. For example, there is a line item “Investments” of $509,730 which references “Note 7” but Note 7 is not included on the report even though there is a footnote at the bottom of each report that states, “The accompanying notes are an integral part of the basic financial statements.” What investments does Sagle Fire District have that total $509,730? We don’t know and, without Note 7 and all the other notes, we can’t make sense of these reports.

3. When you click on the Emergency Response tab on the “About Your Department” page, you are taken to two options: a map of the Sandpoint fire protection area and a map of the Sagle Fire District. When you click on the Sagle Fire District link, you are taken to a PDF which displays a map of portions of Bonner County with various color overlays. However, there is no key to the map indicating what the color overlays are meant to convey so no meaningful information is provided by this map. After viewing it, the citizen would still not know what Sagle Fire District’s service area is.

4. Back to the Selkirk Fire home page. The Meetings tab on this page takes you to the following:

I suppose it’s pointless to be annoyed by this, but the description under the Meetings tab is, in my opinion, a bit presumptuous:

“The Board of Fire Commissioner meetings are scheduled for the second Tuesday of each month at 8:30 a.m. and are held at Selkirk Fire Station 2, 2689 Gun Club Road, Sagle.”

It would be more accurate to say:

“The Sagle Board of Fire Commissioner meetings are scheduled for the second Tuesday of each month at 8:30 a.m. and are held at Selkirk Fire Station 2, the Sagle Fire Station, 2689 Gun Club Road, Sagle.”

After all, until their “rubber stamp” meeting on Tuesday this week, the name change that Selkirk Fire is pushing is not a done deal.

I am pleased to see that Selkirk Fire is, at last, posting a meeting calendar so that citizens who wish to attend Sagle Fire District meetings and JPA meetings can so do. However, I would suggest that the events on the calendar need to specify which board of commissioners meetings are being listed (as in, Sagle Fire District Board of Commissioners) since, evidently, Westside Fire District will also be participating in this JPA and will be having board meetings which citizens of that district might want to attend. And what about the Sandpoint City Council meetings?

The listing of the minutes under the 2015 minutes and 2016 minutes links appear to be complete, but, again, the titles of the documents should reflect whether these are the minutes of the Sagle Fire District, the JPA, the Sandpoint City Council or the Westside Fire District to clear up any possible confusion and to make it easy for citizens to find the information they’re looking for.

In conclusion, I could have spent (and probably will spend) more time analyzing each and every page on this website in order to provide feedback to the “powers that be” whether or not the feedback is welcomed or acted upon.

Perhaps the most troubling thing about my review of the Selkirk Fire website is the attempt to remove all references to the Sagle Fire District. Under the Meetings tab, the calendar entries for the Sagle Fire District BOC meetings are simply called “Board of Commissioners” meetings not “Sagle Fire Board of Commissioners”. By the same token, the documents displayed under the Minutes links are not titled so that we know whether we’re looking at the Sagle Fire District Commissioners meetings or one of the other governing bodies. Granted under the Emergency Response tab, the Sagle Fire Response Zone map is identified as such, but for how long? I’d guess this is an old map and will have a new name if updated.

On the home page of Selkirk Fire, there is no mention of the Sagle Fire District as shown below. Most of the communities listed under the picture are Sagle Fire District communities, but there is no mention of Sagle Fire District anywhere.

It feels as if there is a deliberate attempt to wipe the name of the Sagle Fire District (along with its difficult past?) out of living memory so that the “new and improved” Selkirk Fire JPA can move forward unburdened by old baggage. If I were feeling more generous, I’d call this an oversight, but I think the effort is a bit too obvious and all-encompassing to be that. I believe that this is part of a concerted effort to remodel Sagle Fire District as simply the southern end of Selkirk Fire.

Maybe it wouldn’t be so hard to swallow if it didn’t also feel like Selkirk Fire, the Sandpoint City Council and the Westside Fire District see Sagle Fire District as the cash cow which, if they get their way in changing the Sagle Fire District tax basis, will fund the expansion of the fire/EMS services they’re all scheming for.

MARRION

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Careywood