New Fire District Doctor Talk Leads to Board Member Dispute

The board of trustees appointed a new doctor to perform physicals on firefighters.

The board voted 4-1 in favor of bringing on Dr. William Crevier, with trustee Martin McGill putting in the one vote against the appointment. McGill left the closed session portion of Tuesday night’s fire board meeting before the other trustees, claiming he was not previously aware of any move to appoint a new doctor.

“There must’ve been a lot of things I missed at the meeting last month,” McGill said. “I didn’t hear there were any problems with the physician they had.”

Trustee Chris Evoy said there weren’t any complaints about the old physician, but the trustees decided to open up a request for proposals for physician services for yearly health certification to see if a better price was out there. Evoy said Crevier was not offered a full contract, just an appointment.

“We’re going to test the waters a little bit and if it doesn’t turn out to be the right thing we’ll make some corrections to it,” Evoy said. “But we’re under no obligations.”

Evoy said Crevier submitted the lowest bid to the district’s request for proposals for the physician services.

“We’re trustees and we need to make sure the money is being spent in the best possible way,” Evoy said.

Crevier holds an office in Orland Park.

“He had been proposed to the board several times over the last few years,” said Orland Fire Protection District spokesman Ray Hanania.

2011 Audit Complete

A financial audit of the fire district for the 2011 fiscal year was just completed

“We feel that what is in here does represent what has transpired to where you stood at the end of the year,” said Edward T. McCormick, a CPA from Mulcahy, Pauritsch and Salvador, the accounting firm who performed the audit. “You as a board should be happy to hear that because it’s not always the case we can give such an opinion.”

Details presented from the report include:

• Net assets exceed liabilities by more than $24 million
• Unrestricted net assets are of about $10 million in value
• Fund balance decreased by $3 million, largely due to work done on the administration center
• Pensions are 76.5 percent funded

McCormick noted that several other fire districts are closer to 30 percent in funding pensions. He also praised finance director Kerry Sullivan for her help with the audit.

The full report is expected to be posted on the fire district’s website.

Firefighters Union Ready to Negotiate New Contract

Orland Firefighters Union Local 2754 president Wally Rafacz said during Monday night’s meeting that the union has been ready to begin contract negotiations since February.

“We’ll be happy to start when you guys are,” he said.

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