May 5, 2008 Emergency Management Team Meeting Minutes
1.  Members present:  Fire Chief and Emergency Management Director (EMD) Walter Tibbetts, Board of Health (BOH) Chairman William “Bill” Elliott, Highway Superintendent Timothy Hunting, Town Administrator David C. Dann, & Administrative Secretary Leslie Bracebridge recording.  Also arriving later in the meeting:  E-911 Coordinator Michael Friedman and Police Chief Harding.
Meeting opened at 7:08 P.M.
Agenda Topics:
2. Guest speaker Massachusetts Emergency Management Region III Planner Bonnie Roy reviewed the Continuity of Operations Plan (COOP) checklist:
* Designed to carry out town operations from 12 hours to 30 days out in the event of an emergency.
* The pandemic plan has been completed by the Board of Health – What to do without personnel.
* This second COOP is if say a tornado arrives; what to do in the event of a damaging emergency.
* Each town decides which functions are essential.
* If there is a department that is not essential, they revolve around and help with the essential functions:  Who are the key people and then, the order of succession.
* Homeland Security prefers back-up support “three-deep” for every position. 
o Are there ways such as retirees that could fill in; or, could we borrow a position from another town, or is a CERT Team member available?
* What back-up buildings and equipment are available for emergencies that only affect some part of town?
* In the future if officials want to build farther steps out, they can.
* The COOP will be filed electronically and attached to the town’s emergency action plan.
* Make sure the backup people have the authority to carry out the essential functions.  They can be given emergency authority in the event of the activation of a COOP plan or by specific Select Board direction.  It can be limited to essential functions and not all functions of the person being covered.
* Vital records needed to keep essential functions running for thirty days.
o Memory sticks, outside storage, safe deposit boxes.
* Where will the back-up operations be done?  In the school in the summer? A room in an alternate town, mutual aid agreements, working out of private homes? “Hot” “warm” and “cold” sites.
* “Interoperable Communications”: Have three at location.  What needs to be brought in?
* Personnel:  Notification plan in place?  How to contact all employees?  Training?
* Contracts and job descriptions: can write back-up functions into the job descriptions so that it is required in the event of an emergency.
* Updates, tests, trainings:
o Review plans annually
o Do tabletop exercises.
* Emergency procedures:
o Evacuation plans, shelter in place plans
o Employees being ready at home so that they are ready and willing to come in to help their community.
* Clarksburg did a nice plan that might be used as a template.  The Board of Health template is the easiest template to use.  The template from the Homeland Security Council is geared to larger cities.
* Bill: We have a large number of paper records.  Anything that can be converted to electronic form can be put on the MEMA system. Our photocopier has the ability to scan records and could be set up to “talk” to a laptop and convert whatever records can be scanned. There is no state funding available to do so at this time.

(E-911 Coordinator Michael Friedman arrived at 7:39 PM.)

o Usually Homeland Security comes out with some leftover funds.  The last guidelines for leftover funds were not “small town friendly.”  Bonnie did not feel that the Executive Office of Public Safety and Security would change those guidelines.
o E-911 Coordinator Michael Friedman:  Questioned security relative to the use of computers on the network that maintain personal information if staff work from home.  (There is a new set of laws concerning computer security that Michael will get to the Committee.)  
o $750 is available for preparing the COOP plan at $20/hour for 37.5 hours.  It is an 8-week or so process and it has to be paid to an individual.  The Select Board could sign the plan at their June 10 meeting.  David will remind all departments that they need to have their information to the EMD by May 16.  (Information was originally due on May 1.)  
o The Board of Health COOP, already created, can just be appended to the plan.  
o The town signed a mutual aid agreement that already gives the legal authority to share some resources with other towns. 

Police Chief Harding arrived at 8:00 PM.

o Mutual aid would play a part in the event of an emergency; widespread emergencies are assisted by wider supports.
To a question of when the town might expect a response back from DCR Officeon
o The Lake Wyola Emergency Action Plan is reviewed by the Massachusetts Emergency Management Agency (MEMA).  MEMA comments go back to the Department of Conservation and Recreation (DCR) and in an involved process eventually go back to the submitting town to distribute locally.  All Emergency Action Plans should be reviewed at least one time per year.  
o The dam owner is responsible for creating the dam Emergency Action Plan. Amherst did a plan for the Atkins Reservoir (which is in Shutesbury, but owned by the Town of Amherst.)

3.  Update on Lake Wyola 
3a. The latest Lake Wyola EAP will be distributed before the summer storm season as soon as we hear back from the guest speaker Massachusetts Emergency Management Region III Planner Bonnie Roy.
3b. The first hurdle of the $150,000 of state funding to pass the House budget was achieved.  The next step is for it to be placed in the Senate budget and finally, to be signed by the Governor.
3c. Evacuation Kits.
o A copy of Leverett’s EAP “Go-Kit” will be distributed to members of the emergency action team.
o EMD Tibbetts will contact Leverett’s EMD to get ideas for warning and supplying emergency action plan kits to residents downstream from the Lake Wyola dam.
o How people in Shutesbury responded in October 2005 at the Lake Wyola Dam will be featured in the American Legion magazine as a good example of how people should respond.

4. NIMS compliance training is essentially done.
o The town received training reimbursement funds.
o Un-used funds:  The Fire Department got funding for 13 pagers, and will be reimbursed $75 for each pager that is returned.  The page is initiated from Shelburne Control.  Going from low-band pagers to high band pagers.  If Shelburne control sends a message to EMD Tibbetts, it is communicated to all of the pagers.  In an up-coming regional Homeland Security exercise,  EMD Tibbetts will get a message that he in turn will pass on to the Board of Health Chairman. 

Old Business:  
o Reimbursement was received from FEMA for the April 2007 Northeaster.
o The Board of Health survey data has been tabulated and is in the Board of Health file. Bill will send the data to EMD Tibbetts and Police Chief Harding.  E911 Coordinator Michael Friedman explained the 911 disability forms.  EMD Tibbetts could use both a street list style listing and a stand alone list.  
No new business.

8. The next meeting will be Monday July 7, 2008 at 7 P.M.               

Adjourned at 8:55 P.M.

Respectfully submitted,


Leslie Bracebridge, Administrative Secretary

080505 Emergency Management Team Minutes 1