The City of Meadow Lake has a new means of recovering costs associated with fighting fires. During the Jan. 8 regular meeting of city council, a motion was carried authorizing administration to enter into an agency agreement with Fire Marque and to prepare the necessary changes to the city’s fire services and fire safety bylaw to enable the city to use Fire Marque for cost recovery purposes as proposed.
“As requested by council at its Oct. 23 meeting, Chris Carrier from Fire Marque attended the Dec. 11 council meting as a delegation to present and discuss usage and billing of the service,” explained Meadow Lake fire chief Joe Grela in his official recommendation to council. “No decision was made at that meeting, therefore council may now discuss and make a resolution on whether or not the city will enter into an agency agreement with Fire Marque. Administration believes the clarifications provided by the delegation Dec. 11 show the decisions on how billing happens are made by the city and the intent is to only recover costs from insurance companies, not individual property owners.” While the city recovers costs from its regional agreements for firefighting services outside of the community, it doesn’t recover costs within the city.
“We still would not bill a property owner within the city who does not have applicable insurance coverage, and this would allow the city to use Fire Marque to recover costs from the property owner’s insurance company where coverage exists,” Grela continued. “The first step toward cost recovery is entering into an agency agreement with Fire Marque so they may act on our behalf. This can be done by resolution. A signed agency agreement proves to the insurers Fire Marque has the legal right to work on our behalf. Secondly, the city needs to ‘unlock’ the coverage contained within property insurance policies by amending Section 11 of our fire services and fire safety bylaw and the associated fee schedule to include wording that allows for cost recovery for insured perils not just ‘extra ordinary costs’ as currently drafted.”
Normally the city’s authority does not extend beyond its geographic boundaries, unless specifically worded by contract as with our regional fire agreement. “We would recommend to the communities we have regional agreements they also contract with Fire Marque to help them recover costs on insured perils within those municipalities,” Grela said. “Swift Current, Moose Jaw, Nipawin and North Battleford are also clients and would be a good resource to speak to regarding the program. The city manager (Diana Burton) reached out to her counterparts in the three cities currently using this service and all said they were happy with it.” Fire Marque is a privately owned Canadian company licensed in all provinces and territories. It was incorporated federally in 2009.
The motion to enter into the agency agreement with Fire Marque was made by councillor Clay DeBray and seconded by councillor Tom Harrison. “When we last discussed this, I brought up billing,” stated councillor Conrad Read. “It wouldn’t be Fire Marque’s prerogative to go after the insured owner if the insurance company’s refuse to pay. That we be at the direction of the city. Will there be something in the bylaw that states the city will not pursue property owners?” Burton said any details in terms of how the city plans to enforce the change to the bylaw will be drafted into the amendment of the bylaw. “This (motion) is just giving us direction to make a bylaw amendment,” she said.