NICK GOSNELL
Hutch Post
HUTCHINSON, Kan. — Reno County Commissioner Randy Parks said the commission's direction to consolidate the rural fire districts in the county is for good reasons.
"That was set in motion back in 2019, before the three new ones of us got in office," Parks said. "It's been that length of time to try to refine it to the point where Adam Weishaar could actually present it to us in redistricting. All the outside districts, outside of Hutchinson, if you look at it that way, they want to go to one district, too, to put it in there and break down the boundary lines. There's been some confusion, I think, in the county and some confusion about what will happen. I think, to simplify it a little bit, they want to break them down for the purposes of faster response times. I think Reno County and Hutch has great response times for emergencies and I appreciate that very much. But, you've got some that are grouped in areas where their response time to a corner could be closer to another fire station."
The hope is to also be able to get all the rural fire stations on an equipment replacement schedule.
"There is some hurdles with budgeting," Parks said. "Obviously, they all have their mill levies in their areas that raise money to fund them. There have been questions about that. That's just going to have to be refined on the budget part of it. I think there's been conceptions from some of the firefighters out there that it's going to take their autonomy away and their control. A lot of those things were brought up and discussed the other day in the meeting and I think aired out. It was a good time for them to speak what they felt, a couple good representatives there and some fire chiefs. I think it's headed in a good direction."
In addition to having a county fire chief, the idea of paying volunteer firefighters to stay at their station on Red Flag Warning days is also on the table.
"That's part of the development, I'm looking to see how that's going to happen," Parks said. "That may be a difficult sell. Most of them have jobs and other obligations, that kind of stuff. Even the chiefs, some of them do, because, obviously, it's not a full-time position. I don't know who that they are going to rely on to do that. It's going to be difficult to pull, obviously, volunteers in to do that, if they are working another job. We'll see how that shapes up. I'm sure that everybody's going to hear that before long."
The intent is to have public meetings in the different fire districts in the county to get feedback before bringing back a proposal as part of the 2025 budget process.
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