Munson Township Trustees and Munson Fire Department Inc. spent a lot of time in the weeds during a special meeting workshop Feb. 6.
Munson Township Trustees and Munson Fire Department Inc. spent a lot of time in the weeds during a special meeting workshop Feb. 6.
But they came out long enough to agree on a resolution recognizing the new structure of the fire department’s board of trustees.
The four members of the fire department explained at length about the philosophy behind the change from a three-member board to a five-member board, which will include a township resident who is not a department member.
The four — Assistant Chief Michael Vatty, part-time firefighter Jonathan Sague, full-time firefighter Brain Gray and B-shift Captain Matthew Hartman — were approved by the membership as the board of trustees at a Jan. 10 meeting.
Early in the Feb. 6 meeting, both boards reviewed part of the bylaws of the nonprofit corporation.
Township Trustee Andy Bushman said the township trustees didn’t need to approve the bylaws, just recognize the governing body structure for Munson Fire Department Inc.
Sague, who worked as a nurse practitioner before managing a large mobile integrated healthcare company in Dallas, served as a spokesman for the group.
“I hope to take everything I know as a firefighter, nurse practitioner and businessman and use it to march the Munson Fire Department forward,” he said.
The philosophy behind the formation of a new board was to include one of the highest-ranking officers in the department (not the chief, who is a township employee), a shift captain, a full-time firefighter, a part-time firefighter and a township resident, Sague said.
“We wanted equal representation across the fire department and with a resident of the township,” he said, adding the bylaws still need a lot of work, but they sketch out the change in the governing body.
For instance, there needs to be allowance for someone to run the meetings, plus a treasurer and a secretary, but the group didn’t want a formal chairperson or president.
“When I proposed it to the board, I wanted the hierarchy to be flat,” Sague said.
Township Trustee Andy Bushman, who is also the trustee liaison to the department, said it is up to the department to decide how they want to run their meetings.
“All we are doing is recognizing the board, not individuals. It’s a structure,” he said.
Gray, who worked in investment and private banking before starting a business as a funeral home director and embalmer, explained the relationship between the township and the fire department.
“We have a business — a nonprofit corporation in the State of Ohio — that happens to have a fire department,” he said.
The fire chief is a township employee who handles the operations of the department. The fire department board of directors takes care of the 501(c)4 corporation. Firefighters are employees of the corporation, Gray said.
“The fire chief is head of operations and the board manages the department,” Bushman said, adding the bylaws intentionally do not specify the chief will be on the fire department board.
Township trustees voted unanimously to recognize the current structure of the board of trustees of Munson Fire Department Inc. as the governing body of the corporation.
Then the two boards started working through the minutiae of the bylaws.
“This document is a work in progress. It was written before any of us were on board. It needs some work. We need to get it confirmed so we can move on with the contract,” Vatty said.
Both boards agreed they want to have a contact approved by April 1, 2018.
