Sept 8th Public Comment in West Lafayette

You can watch the public comment below.

• The fire chief's EMS report is at 1:21:00

• I'm at 2:04:50
  

https://westlafayette.granicus.com/player/clip/2212?view_id=1&redirect=true

I'll start all of this off with the following statement: I don't believe West Lafayette is my enemy. I don't want to be their enemy. But this issue is important to all residents of the county, and it needs to be fixed. I will go speak in front of whatever government unit involved in the TEAS, Inc organization until one of them fixes it.

"We have a great relationship with them"

It's great that Chief Need feels that he has a good working relationship with the EMTs driving TEAS ambulances. I think Chief Need is trying to make the fire department as responsive as it can be, but none of the elected officials of West Lafayette are taking the issues seriously.

These are the issues:

• Advanced Life Support (ALS) response standard is 8 minutes. TEAS is not responding within that standard. It's instead responding in 14-16 minutes, depending on the month, inside West Lafayette.

• As a non-profit corporation with members, TEAS, Inc is required by state law to hold member meetings, where it performs specific actions. It is not. (See the attorney general complaint)

• Because TEAS is not holding member meetings, the following things are not being provided to the Mayor or City Council that are required by both its bylaws and state law:

  • Operational reports - To have context around what TEAS is doing to manage response times at an appropriate level

  • Financial reports - To have context around the financial constraints that goes along with operations

  • Board meeting minutes - To see what decisions are being made and why

• According to the most recent public records we can get access to, Franciscan and IU Health appear to be siphoning millions of dollars out of TEAS and into the hospital systems, instead of improving response times. Non-profits are supposed to reinvest their surplus into improving their services, not acting like a for-profit company. This is why they're given preferential tax treatment.

Why does any of this matter?

• Poor response times affect the residents that these public officials are supposed to be representing. Even on a moral level, City Council should care about things of public importance

• Beyond the moral argument, state law explicitly states that the provisioning of Emergency Medical Services is an "essential purpose of the political subdivisions of the state".

• As a Director on the TEAS, Inc Board, Chief Need has a fiduciary duty not to knowingly allow the non-profit to act illegally.

  • Now that I've pointed out and cited to Chief Need multiple times these legal issues, if he's doing nothing to correct them, I believe that opens the city of West Lafayette to legal liability.

• As the Mayor is the member agent for the City of West Lafayette, the Mayor should also not be allowing this non-profit to operate in violation of state law. The Mayor should be advocating for the TEAS, Inc organization to start honoring its legal agreements, now that she knows about these legal agreements.

  • Note - TEAS, Inc was formed before Mayor Easter took office, and I believe that she did not know about these legal agreements until I made her aware of them a few months ago.

• The poor response times mean firefighters and police officers have to spend more time on scene before they can clear it, requiring the cities to need to devote more resources than they should need to. If TEAS is profiting by millions of dollars a year, they shouldn't be wasting police and firefighter time standing around waiting for TEAS to arrive.

  • Those tax dollars spent come out of our pockets.

• All of these reports and documents are public records, and the public should have access to them as well to keep all involved accountable.