Monday, May 7, 2012
Monarch Fire spends $10K grant on outfitting mobile homes with smoke alarms.
Residents of Chesterfield's Mobile Home Park were found to be the most vulnerable to danger from fires in the entire Monarch Fire Protection District, fire officials said. So local firefighters have installed 230 smoke alarms at the Park so far, Monarch Fire Marshall Roger Herin said Monday. The most recently organized efforts were this past Thursday, and Sunday. Herin said the criteria for the high-risk determination included: A $10,000 grant was used to buy 448 smoke alarms, pamphlets, hardware and related tools to install. The alarms were installed with 10-year batteries. Special smoke alarms for hearing-impaired were also available, that typically include flashing lights. U.S. Fire Administration Assistance to Firefighters Fire …
Tuesday, April 17, 2012
Chesterfield public agency has no room for wording reminiscent of Rush Limbaugh's "feminazi" or Jerry Seinfeld's "Soup Nazi."
When there is a rare open public meeting at Chesterfield's March Fire Protection District, someone from Chesterfield Patch tries to attend. On Monday night, there were a total of three people at the meeting, including me. One left early. Here's what I heard. A Nazi on staff: During a discussion about increasing firefighter/paramedic on-the-job training from half-an-hour a day to two hours a day, district Training Officer Robin Echele used statistics to make a point. He referred to a staffer as the “Data Nazi” who had come up with certain statistics. It struck me as odd that a person working in a political subdivision that included a sizeable Jewish population would even consider using the word “Nazi” in this way. Nazis killed and tortured …
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Monarch Fire Protection District
13725 Olive Blvd, Chesterfield, MO
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Thursday, April 12, 2012
New Monarch Fire Chief Tom Vineyard is voted president by his peers of the fire chiefs association.
Tom Vineyard, who recently became the chief of the Monarch Fire Protection District, added a few more job responsibilities to his plate Tuesday when he was elected to preside over the Greater St. Louis Area Fire Chiefs Association (GSLAFCA). Since 1958, the association has served as a group through which fire chiefs share best practices, fire education trends and certain committee work, such as handling of hazardous materials (HAZMAT). Previously, Vineyard served as the association's secretary. The association includes fire chiefs from St. Louis, St. Charles, Franklin and Jefferson counties, as well as the city of St. Louis. As president of the association, Vineyard said one of his goals is to encourage fire chiefs to collectively …
Friday, April 6, 2012
Monarch Fire Protection District directors vote 2-1 in favor.
After two hours Thursday, and more than a year in the making, Chesterfield's firefighters and Monarch Fire Protection District trustees agreed on a contract that tweaks paid time-off, keeps base wages flat, and takes into account a $1 million drop in revenue. A recent tax hike proposed by the board majority was dropped after public objection. The 3-year contract agreement is retroactive to January 2011. That means in 20 months the district could be back struggling over another agreement. Monarch Fire Chief Tom Vineyard said Thursday he was glad to have the contract in place. "I think it's a win-win," Vineyard said afterward. In a 2-1 vote, district trustees Kim Evans and Steve Swyers voted in favor of the contract. Robin Harris voted no. …
Friday, March 23, 2012
Take a look at how Fire District trustees measure up against State Auditor's criticisms, in this author's opinion.
Open public meetings of the Monarch Fire Protection District can be rare things, so I was sure to attend the open meeting on Wednesday March 22. The meeting started with an almost empty room. The public outnumbered reporters 4-to-3. The board’s attorney was absent as was Fire Chief Tom Vineyard, who was in Colorado on a ski vacation. (Pretty good for someone on the job three months.) After the opening Pledge of Allegiance, things got sticky for the Board of Trustees and Sunshine Laws. In the last two months, Monarch was raked over the coals by the State Auditor’s Office for violating the Missouri Sunshine Law—including open meetings laws. News articles and columns followed, including three in Chesterfield Patch and an editorial in the St. …
Wednesday, March 14, 2012
Eclipse: Fire District Celebrates Sunshine Week with a Closed Meeting
March 15-21 has been declared Missouri Sunshine Week, by Attorney General Christ Koster. The week is to remind local governments about open record and meeting laws. To kick off the week the Monarch Fire Protection District is having a CLOSED MEETING on March 15. This will be the fifth closed meeting since Missouri Auditor Tom Schweich issued a scathing report about Monarch illegally holding closed meetings. The report included that Monarch used closed meetings to hide such things as a $26,000 party for employees, claiming it was a personnel issue. The latest round of Monarch closed meetings also comes after a Post-Dispatch editorial lambasting the fire district and other government agencies that use closed meetings to keep the public …
Friday, February 17, 2012
Violation of Sunshine Laws and wasted money seemed apparent, author says.
I didn’t start attending Monarch Fire Protection Board of Director meetings until November, but it did not take long for me to figure out that something was not right. When Missouri Auditor Thomas Schweich released his audit of the District on February 15, it would have been surprising if he had not found what he did. Closed Meetings: More often than not the Board of Directors meetings were closed. The whole point of the Open Meetings Law and the Sunshine Law is to make closed meetings the exception and not the rule. In a January 4 column I wrote how nine of the last 14 scheduled meetings were CLOSED. (See photo.) So, litte surprise when the State Auditor found in the first nine months of 2011 there were 40, yes forty, incidents when the …
Wednesday, February 15, 2012
Monarch FPD rated "Fair" in state audit, one above "Poor."
State auditors found extra pay worth $280,000 to seven senior employees of Chesterfield's Monarch Fire Protection District violated the Missouri Constitution, officials said Wednesday night at a public meeting. The audit also found duplicate payments to the pension attorney. The payments to employees were retirement incentives which in effect raised the past salaries of senior employees by $2,000 and $1,500 more per year. "The Missouri Constitution forbids granting any extra compensation to public employees for services already rendered," according to a summary supplied by Missouri Auditor Thomas Schweich's office. Schweich rated the district "Fair" on a scale of excellent, good, fair and poor. In addition, the district paid "excessive …
Tuesday, February 14, 2012
Some tunes fit better than others, on this holiday.
Love For Sale: The Cole Porter classic is a perfect love song for St. Louis County Executive Charlie Dooley. In November Dooley threatened closing 20 parks and selling off the Elk and other wildlife at Lone Elk Park. I Can See Clearly Now…an excellent song for the folks at Smoke Free St. Louis, sung by Johnny Nash with Bob Marley's band backing him up. It is even a better song for the optometrists that keep campaign contributions flowing to members of the state legislature to ensure that a law stays on the books. And it's a law that is unique to Missouri and requires parents to obtain three eye exams for children between grades kindergarten and fifth grade. Checking Chesterfield’s current senator’s campaign finance records for November and…
Tuesday, February 7, 2012
Monarch FPD announces changes.
- POLICE & FIRE
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Tuesday, February 7
A spokesman for Chesterfield-based Monarch Fire Protection District said Feb. 7 it promoted three employees, coming after four chiefs were fired November 22. Two of the new chiefs were appointed interim chiefs after the firings. Of the four fired suddenly last year, Battalion Chief Fred Goodson shot and killed himself two weeks later in woods near his home in Kirkwood. Also fired: Assistant Chief Les Crews, Deputy Chief Cary Spiegel and Battalion Chief Mike Davis. While Monarch board members refused to speak about the firings, citing personnel privacy, two of them did cite a court decision against the district in favor of four women firefighters who said they were discriminated against by superiors, costing the district about $1 million. …
M.A.
11:28 am on Tuesday, May 8, 2012
It was wonderful of the firefighters who installed them. BUT, why wouldn't the residents buy their own alarms - like other people do? Did the state, county, city or fire district supply the grant? Every trailer resident should have been asked, and probably happy, to contribute toward the cost. more ›