Donald Russ
To:
Marcin Malinowski
Re:
Duty.
Cc:
Amy Bernstein, Dave Andersen, Karl Snoblin
Wed, Feb 26 at 6:15 PM
Mr. President,
You wrote to me the day after our second
meeting (1/21) and I wrote to you the evening of our (first scheduled) third
meeting (2/17) saying, “I have not received any communication from you or
anyone associated with Rockland since [you wrote to me the day after our second
meeting].”
Earlier today you write, “…please check
any other email accounts you may have used to correspond with members of the
board.” You seem to be suggesting that I
might have simply failed to read an email that was correctly sent to me. That is not so. The two email accounts and my phone (for
voice & text) that are known to you or other board members are functioning
correctly and are monitored closely. The
failure was entirely yours.
That is not a consequential point, but
it is absolutely true and any denial of responsibility is intolerable,
especially since my only (non-residential) connection to the RFPD is through
the CRC which has the mission of holding a prior RFPD board accountable for its
own errors. I did not receive the email
that was purportedly sent February 12th or any others between 1/21 and 2/17.
One week ago, Trustee Bernstein, to her
credit, wrote to me, “I believe I have the wrong email address written down for
you…My sincere apologies…” We can leave
it at that, or, if you prefer, Trustee Bernstein and I can meet and review her
email so that we can identify the exact instance of where the “wrong email
address written down” was used.
On much more important matters, you
write, “The hypothetical ‘million dollar benefit’ you
reference that ‘the Rogers Board acted to capture’ is exactly that, a
hypothesis.” The mission of the CRC is
to understand the perspective of the Rogers Board. The two projections that are the last pages
of the Financial/Contracts section of our 3-ring notebooks, which were
presented at our second meeting, were available to the Rogers Board.
It is therefore reasonable for the CRC
to conclude (as I noted in my January 20th email to the board) that the Rogers
Board understood that “the paper district projection is wrongly burdened with
post-transition-year building expenses of $682,545.70 and further excludes the
building equity (which Treasurer Snoblin said was
significantly more than $300,000) for a combined benefit of more than a million
dollars.”
As I write this, we are 44 days past the
January 13th RFPD Board meeting. The
best information I have of the current building status comes from a Chicago
Tribune story (Dan Dorfman) published two weeks after that meeting which says,
“Karl Snoblin, treasurer for the fire protection
district, said the district pays $90,000 each year on mortgage payments for the
former fire station and another estimated $10,000 a year in utilities and
maintenance on the building.”
First, transparency. On November 13th last year I wrote to Trustee
Bernstein (copying the other two trustees) in her capacity as Secretary, “I
therefore suggest that the Board post the unapproved minutes the same evening
as board meetings. There is no reason
not to do this. Indeed, failure to
promptly post minutes is opaque (the opposite of ‘transparent’) and needlessly
provokes reckless speculation. You as
Secretary could order this immediately.
Such minutes would be labeled ‘Unapproved and Subject to Change’ and
would be supplemented with the approved minutes a month later.”
44 days after the regular January
meeting, there is nothing on your website except the agenda prepared prior to
the meeting. It is only from noticing
the changed agenda item for the February regular meeting or from the faint hope
that the Tribune stringer might generate a story that might be published that I
might search for, that gives me any knowledge.
My suggestion of posting unapproved minutes has never even been
acknowledged by Secretary Bernstein.
Perhaps the board discussed my
suggestion, but how would I know even that?
My suggestion was easy to implement and cost-free. Before the Rogers Board is faulted for lack
of “transparency” – well you are living in a glass house and throwing stones
all over the place.
Second, the Rogers Board was informed of
post-transition-year building expenses of $682,545.70 through 2028. The Rogers Board was also informed of the
building equity (which Treasurer Snoblin said was
significantly more than $300,000) for a combined benefit of more than a million
dollars.
This is not a “hypothesis,” as you call
it. It is the facts available to the
Rogers Board at the time they made their decisions. You continue: “…presumption that the building
mortgage would immediately drop off as a district expense, implying an
immediate sale of the building.” The
Rogers Board did indeed make that possible.
The only meeting of the RFPD that I have
ever attended was the April 8th meeting of the Rogers Board. At that meeting, both you and I addressed the
board. You said they should not act on
the building and I said they should. An
appraised value of $630 thousand was announced.
Haig Klujian bid $760 thousand. I left before the meeting ended and whispered
to Haig Klujian, “I hope you get it.”
He replied to me, “I do too.”
Haig Klujian
later increased his bid to $980 thousand.
In November 18, 2019 the Pioneer Press (again Dan Dorfman) reported,
“After the meeting, Klujian said he wanted to use the
property for his work, and he does have the cash on hand to process the
transaction. However, he expressed caution about the animosity that still
exists with some Knollwood residents over the prior board’s decision to
outsource the community’s fire department services to the point that a
citizen’s committee is scheduled to start meeting next month to examine the
decision.”
Even after he knew his first bid was
above the appraisal, and even a half-year after he further raised his bid to
nearly a million dollars, (and a half-year after the Rogers Board was no longer
seated) of which he said, “he does have the cash on hand to process the
transaction” the Malinowski Board failed to close the deal. His only stated reservation was that the
Malinowski Board’s “citizen’s committee is scheduled to start meeting next
month to examine the decision.”
The Rogers Board can hardly be faulted
for that. The post-transition-year
building expenses of $682,545.70 through 2028 (“Karl Snoblin,
treasurer for the fire protection district, said the district pays $90,000 each
year on mortgage payments for the former fire station and another estimated
$10,000 a year in utilities and maintenance on the building.”) and the building
equity (which Treasurer Snoblin said was
significantly more than $300,000) is more than a million dollars that the
Malinowski Board must extract from district taxpayers which the Rogers Board
had rendered unnecessary.
Third, a million bucks is a lot of money
even if realized only over a period of years.
In your reasoning, you take the annual amount and divide by an assumed
756 households to arrive at some $169 per year, which you then modify and
further divide by 12 to arrive at some $15 per month. You missed a bet: You could then divide the $15 per month per
household by 3 people per household and divide that by 30 days per month and
get 16 cents per day per capita. You
could then ask the question, “Isn’t saving a life worth 16 cents?”
I certainly agree with you that “This
entire topic cannot be diluted to a simple arithmetic problem.” Let’s leave such nonsense behind. A million bucks is a lot of money “full rest,”
as Chief Carani (at 32:54) says, regardless of how
finely you slice it. Stewardship if a
fundamental duty of the RFPD Board and the CRC cannot honestly fault the Rogers
Board for not making justifiable and earnest effort. If any review is ever made of the Malinowski
Board’s subsequent handling of the building sale, I hold less hope for such a
finding.
Fourth, grasping at straws, you write,
“The building that has become a subject of contention, was available as an
emergency shelter for individuals seeking refuge from violent storms or that
were stranded by their incapacitated vehicle due to a flooded Route 41/176
underpass.” That is not your mission any
more than converting it to a homeless shelter would be. It might be relevant to the Shields Township
mission, but not the fire district.
We voted at the Shields Township
building before it was changed to the firehouse. The fire board could meet at the Shields
boardroom, which is better suited than the firehouse classroom for that
purpose. When I was President of the
Lake Bluff School Caucus, the Shields Township boardroom was offered to us for
no charge.
The Knollwood firehouse was poorly
conceived as a firehouse. It is not the
role of the fire board to rationalize it for another, lesser purpose. And now we learn that IDOT has determined
that the property is more useful as a literal hole in the ground. We need a detention pond, not a
stranded-motorist shelter.
Fifth, whether it is $100 thousand for
the District per year (per Karl Snoblin) or $169 per
family per year (per Marcin Malinowski) or 16 cents per day per capita (per Don
Russ) the fact remains that we are not paying that for improved service, nor
are we paying it for any service at all.
We are paying it for nothing. We
have had an ambulance contract for years which accounts for 98 percent of our
calls-for-service. When the Rogers Board
expanded that contract from 98 percent to 100 percent, we no longer needed to
incur building expense. It is just like
continuing to pay for Comcast TV service every month after you quit watching cable
TV.
Lastly, I have two step-sons
and both were soldiers – one still is.
When a soldier fights, he fights to win.
He is not thinking about conserving bullets to save the taxpayers’
money. First responders, same
thing. When the ambulance is parked in a
driveway and the husband is turning blue and the wife is hysterical, the
paramedics should be doing everything they can to win the fight.
But there are many limitations on the
RFPD fight in that driveway. Instead of
responding with one ambulance, wouldn’t two be better? Wouldn’t it be better to surround the patient
with six paramedics? Why not six
certified M.D.s?
The soldier clearing the room or the
paramedic kneeling in the driveway is trained, motivated and determined to do
everything he can to win the fight. He
makes no trade-offs. And that is what
differentiates the front-line warriors from the strategic decision-makers in
the boardrooms. Should the defense
contractor have made the rifle receiver out of titanium instead of
aluminum? It would make the rifle $25
more expensive (times a million soldiers is 25 million
dollars) but it would make the rifle half-ounce lighter.
Ask the soldier and he will tell you
that he cares a lot about the half-ounce that he carries but he doesn’t care at
all about the $25 that someone else pays.
That’s the front-line perspective.
And that’s the reason we don’t have a referendum of soldiers when we
develop specifications for army rifles.
I know that you (and Members Knesley & Johnson and (James) Bernstein) were on the
front line, but respectfully, I suggest that you need to change your strategic
perspective to suit your new boardroom role.
For example, a goal is not 10-second response time because that would
require the district to buy 300 ambulances and hire 3000 paramedics.
Nor is the goal to amass cash to build a
new firehouse at the first opportunity.
Treasurer Snoblin has been very consistent
about that – I think he sees the board’s duty to the taxpayers clearly. If 10, or 20, or 30 years from now the
district wishes to build a multi-million dollar
firehouse, it can raise the money at that time.
(School District 65 sold bonds 11 years ago to build the $26 million
elementary school on Green Bay.) For
now, our fire district is only entitled to the minimal amount of taxpayers’
money that is necessary for its mission, and its mission is fully served by the
IGA.
You write, “We can agree to disagree,
however ‘acceptable’ is not a term that should be used in
regards to Emergency Medical Services. Acceptable is a term that you can
use when comparing cable or home entertainment providers, but not in Emergency
Medical Services.” The term I have been
using is “adequate” not ”acceptable” but I think I
know what you are saying. Anyone can see
that you take you job seriously and I believe that you want to do it well, but
I do not “agree to disagree;” I think you are wrong on this and that you should
change your mind.
Consider: What does “more than adequate” mean to
you? Is that what you say when you mean
“extra good?” Because that is not what
it means. “More than adequate” means
inefficient or extravagant. If I have
one subscription to HBO, that is adequate.
If I have two subscriptions to HBO, that is “more than adequate.” If I have two subscriptions to HBO, that is
inefficient and extravagant.
We have hard data that establishes that
the response time for an out-of-district professional ambulance lags the in-district
volunteer ambulance by less than a half-minute and we have reason to believe
that fact was know to the Rogers Board.
In my January 20th email to you I asked: “How many families
should face foreclosure so that a non-transporting paramedic can beat the
ambulance by a minute or two? Tough
question. But it is a political
question. And it has been reasonably
answered by a legitimate, duly-empowered board. We have a 20-year contract. We are well past the point of cost-per-call
analysis.”
And we now know that it is not “a minute
or two,” it is less than a half-minute.
A majority vote in a referendum is not
the result of careful analysis; that is the role of the board. Ask the community if they want better
ambulance service and they will always say “yes.” Even if you remind them that it will cost 16
cents and they will still say “yes.”
That is why it is up to the fire board to make the holistic balancing
decisions. And perhaps that is why an
appointed board is preferable to an elected board. Certainly, it is better than a board elected
in anger who sees its mandate as keeping the anger alive.
Most sincerely,
your loyal customer and future patient,
Don Russ