Former fire board member suggests fixes to ISO rating, suggests reviving fire board

By Charlene Sims, Journal staff

LCJeditor@icloud.com

MOUND CITY – The Linn County Commissioners decided to revisit having a fire board after hearing a presentation from Parker resident Tom Kemper about the Insurance Services Office (ISO) report on Monday, May 4. At the end of the presentation, they went into executive session to discuss whether the position of fire chief and emergency management director should continue to be one position or separated into two positions.                                                                                           

Kemper, a former firefighter and fire board member, reported to the commissioners his concerns about Linn County being downgraded in the ISO ratings and the actions that led to this downgrade.

A downgrade in the ISO rating could mean much higher insurance rates for homeowners and business owners in Linn County.

Kemper told the commissioners that County Clerk Chasity Ware had been very helpful in getting him the Kansas Open Records Act (KORA) requests that he needed to make his presentation about what went wrong with the ISO report.

Kemper said the information helped him realize that ISO did not give a full detail-by-detail report until the retrogression period was over. The retrogression period is the time between the inspection during which problems were identified and end of the one-year period that the county had to correct them. Linn County received information in December from the July/August inspection.

But emails through KORA have shown that former fire chief Randy Hegwald had been communicating with ISO about the corrections that needed to be made.

Kemper pointed out that, during a discussion in a commission meeting on April 20 regarding the corrections, Hegwald had said that nozzles had been replaced on a fire truck and that correction had been sent in. Kemper said that part is often missing on a fire truck after it has been out to a fire.

However, Kemper questioned why Hegwald did not check the trucks for minor concerns like that when he knew the ISO inspection was coming. In that same meeting, Hegwald had placed the blame on the water supply for the lowered score and said that was something the county could not control.

Kemper cited an email that said, “Another part of the email (between ISO and Hegwald) it was talked about the lack of documentation for training. Talking to current and former firefighters, the training is way off compared to what it was years ago. When we got, I can’t remember the exact number of points, but we scored quite a few more points with training and deployment.

“Whether you trained or not doesn’t matter to ISO. You got to have it documented to show that you did the work. So there’s four points off our score.

“Now the other thing is, and I still haven’t got it, but I did get a copy of the city of La Cygne’s ISO report that was done last summer. So I got a 2025 report point by point, subcategory by subcategory, and it is almost identical to what 2017’s was. So what i’m saying is nothing has changed with the way they do stuff in the last seven, eight years.

“So now, we go to look at water. Talking to current and former firemen, Randy did not like to use dry hydrants, Dry hydrants are part of your ISO score, he does not like to use the Port-A-Tank. If they’re going tender-to-pumper in a water shuttle versus tender-to-Port-A-Tank-to-pumper. That is an absolute game changer.

“That is probably where we really suffered in our points. Think about, for some of you that don’t understand or don’t know. We’ve got a pumper on scene, we set up a Port-A-Tank right behind that pumper, put a hose into that tank.

“That tank’s four or five thousand gallons, it’s like a swimming pool.  And then when we start dumping, we can dump that truck in a minute to a minute and a half. He’s out of there going to get the next water, bringing another truck, bringing another truck, bringing another truck, Sometimes we can use two Port-A-Tanks at one time.

“I know when we scored for this courthouse several years ago we passed those tests because we did Port-A-Tanks. So now you have a chief that just abruptly leaves. You got all these problems you’ve got to fix. You got to figure out how your gonna get these fixed or everybody s paying more come December.

“And you’ve got an assistant chief here that from what I’ve been told, he’s very good at what he does at supplying the stations and this that and the other. But what kind of experience does he have administering this other stuff? So you need to get working on that.

“The other thing that I would consider is a couple of years ago you got rid of the fire board. And I think that was a huge mistake. Especially right now when you’re short of help. That fire board, those guys, have a lot of knowledge that can help that chief. If you look at your resolution, it clearly states what these guys are to do.

“If you look at an article I pulled back from the Linn County Journal back when it appeared that (former Commissioner Danny McCullough and Commissioner Jim Johnson) were really concerned about getting rid of this board. It shows that they just didn’t want that. Now let me tell you something else. Right before that time period, the board of trustees was starting to question some of the things that were happening in the fire department.

“Red flags were showing up everywhere. They started talking about it in the board of trustees meetings, and all of a sudden we don’t need a board anymore. We don’t need any oversight, which is exactly what we needed. And right now with this ISO report it clearly shows what we should not have done.

“So what are we going to do about it? The solution, what are we going to do about it? What we need to do is get direction and start using these Port-A-Tanks. Let me back up.

“The first thing we need to do. there’s a gal by the name of Heather. I can’t remember her last name. We’ve got her phone number and email. She is the ISO inspector that came down and did all the work here. So, she can’t talk to me or anybody else, but she can talk to the commissioner chairman or the fire chief. Back up one more time.

“There are emails that Randy had with ISO on a team meeting. Randy knows what needs to happen. But I can tell you that it is water shuttle. So going forward, let’s get the fire board involved. You guys can choose these people.

“The other thing is there’s been some complaints about Public Wholesale Water Supply District No.13 (PWWSD13) lack of communication with our fire department. I had a KORA here last week. If you look at the contract that you have with No.13, there are certain things we have to do and certain things No.13 does.

“If we are not doing what they want and they terminate that contract. I guarantee you that you are going to be a 9/10. You are going to have the worst rates that you can have. We want to make sure and if you read the contract it says when we have a fire, we call dispatch, dispatch calls No.13 so they know somebody’s drawing from this tower. Or if its a big fire, we can call them and say ‘Hey elevate the tower, we need the water.’   

“The other thing too is, and I don’t know if it happened or not, but one thing we did back in 2017 when we were doing our testing because part of our normal procedure is to call No.13 to raise the towers. So if you’re testing and you don’t have as much water as you could because your towers aren’t full, that’s Linn County fire department’s fault. So something to think about there.

“The other thing too on this water is these dry hydrants. The county has contracts with these landowners, I being one of them, and I will find it. That basically says, the county can come in and use this water 24/7. It also says the county has to back flush and test these hydrants once a year. From what I understand talking to current and former firemen this hasn’t been done for four or five years. Granted nobody wants to pull out a dry hydrant with dirty water and put them in our trucks and possibly cause damage to the pumps, but when you’re over in Blue Mound, Centerville, or west of Mound City, there’s no No.13 water to be had.

“So you have to draft water. If you’re in Centerville, they’ve got a hydrant there. There’s no way to get water there to put out a structure fire. So its just something we have to do. If you want the points, you’ve got to do the stuff. You’ve got to document it.

“I’m just concerned that we’re wasting time not getting some of this stuff taken care of. “And if we don’t get this thing taken care of, and you’re not going to be able to get this taken care of in October. November because they are going to want to see month’s of records ISO when they come back. They’re going to want to see months of records.

“So you’re saying that we should start by reappointing a fire board?” Commissioner Jason Hightower asked.

Kemper answered, “I would. I mean right now go read your documents and then I’ve got a letter from the Linn County Journal. It’s very clear that Danny and Jim were pretty happy about getting rid of it.”

Hightower said he voted for it too.

Kemper replied, “I know you did, but the thing is what’s good for the citizens?”

Kemper continued, “There were some complaints that the firemen were telling the fire chief what to do. I sat on that board for 15 years I never witnessed that. But here again if you’re going to appoint a board, you need to appoint reasonable people.

“You can’t appoint somebody that’s going to be a yes man for you. I mean guys that can think, guys that are thinking about what’s good for the county. You’ve got to get somebody qualified hired to accomplish these goals.

“One other thing I forgot Randy made the comment that these little towns can’t provide the water. So in 2017 we were at 22, 2017 we dropped to 13. La Cygne scored 30 points on their last ISO, they scored 30 of the 40 points. It’s doable. The only way we are going to do it here in Linn County is with Port-A-Tanks. I talked to several guys they can’t remember the last time they’ve dropped a tank. They can’t remember.”

Commission Chair Alison Hamilton, who came on the commission in January 2025, asked, “If you guys are considering the fire board again, I’m not familiar with how that was structured. If (County Clerk Chasity Ware) could pull some information or resolutions or (information on the fire board). If that’s something you guys are interested in. I would just like to review how it was in the past.”                                                         

Hightower said that he was good with reviewing it. Johnson did not comment.

Hamilton said, “And then at some point we do need to make a decision. I don’t know if you want to go into executive session and discuss that. On emergency management and fire, whether those will be separate or if we’ll be going out to hire someone for both positions together.”

Hightower asked if Hamilton wanted to do that now. Hamilton said she was fine with that.

Hightower moved to go into executive session for non-elected personnel for ten minutes with the clerk, commissioners and legal counsel. There was no action from executive session.