June 30, 2020
To: Stakeholders of Fire Protection District 4
St. Tammany Parish Council
Fire Protection Districts of St. Tammany Parish
Fr: William Dobson, Jr., Chairperson
Board of Commissioners
St. Tammany Parish Fire Protection District 4
Dear Stakeholders, Council Members and Chairpersons:
During my tenure as Chairperson, I have rarely had the opportunity to publicly witness the profound organizational passion expressed by senior leadership of our companion Fire Districts as shown during the June 25, 2020 televised agenda review meeting hosted by our Parish Council.
From my perspective as one of five, taxpaying commissioners whose responsibility it is to ensure the purpose of District 4 is carried out, I routinely learn of the heroic work that our men and women firefighter life-safety personnel accomplish. They eat, sleep and work at every station in our District, poised twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, to respond in the event of individual crisis and community catastrophe. They always place our needs before their own families, lives and safety. These sentiments were powerfully echoed by other Districts.
Our Board is supremely confident in the acumen and leadership of Fire Chief Kenneth Moore and his executive team and that they will continue to implement operational measures that result in the greatest protections for our stakeholders’ property and life- safety as well as our personnel. In 2017-18, Chief Moore and his leadership team met with every homeowners’ association, civic group and individual, who accepted his invitation, to educate District 4 stakeholders on our strategic needs and goals through 2024. During the 2018 election, stakeholders overwhelmingly approved our renewal millage for twenty years.
Our primary strategic goal is to achieve response-time parity between the thirty percent of our stakeholders who we can consistently reach within the nationally accepted time and the seventy percent who are beyond it. This need was confirmed by internal and external subject matter experts, the Property Insurance Association of Louisiana, our accreditation process and through data collection and study. Simply, District growth, construction and population density requires we construct two new stations to meet increasing demands – our last station was constructed more than thirty years ago.
Attached is a report authored by District leadership articulating justification for these two new stations. Our Board will consider a millage roll forward to service a bond already secured for these capital projects. The balance of the roll forward will be used for additional personnel costs and equipment to staff these stations after existing fire company reconfiguration.
Our Board meetings are open to the public and agenda, minutes, monthly financials, reports and budgets are consistently posted to our website. Notwithstanding Chief Moore’s stakeholder educations effort, I recently, and indirectly, received questions from a stakeholder concerning use of our approved millage. Also attached are detailed and complete responses from District leadership to those questions.
As fiduciaries and taxpayers of District 4, this Board echoes the sincere gratitude expressed by our companion Districts for the sacrifice the men and women firefighter life-safety personnel expose themselves to for our wellbeing and security. We are also conscious and grateful for the similar efforts and risks men and women of the Mandeville Police Department and St. Tammany Sheriff’s Department also routinely demonstrate.
With best regards, I am,
Wm. H. Dobson, LPI
Chairman, Board of Commissioners
St. Tammany Parish Fire District #4
