NICK GOSNELL
Hutch Post
HUTCHINSON, Kan. — Hutchinson Fire Chief Steven Beer said the stakeholder meeting held on Monday provided valuable feedback to his department.
"We had numerous citizens come in to help us build our five year strategic plan for the Hutchinson Fire Department," Beer said. "A bunch of individuals representing numerous agencies, non-profits, community members, community stakeholders came in to the Hutchinson Fire Department. Questions were asked to them. We basically stood out of the way and we let a third party administer the process to the citizens, so there was no bias."
It is interesting to see how priorities change based on events that have happened over time.
"It was interesting this year, compared to five years ago, the number one thing that was most important, obviously, was structure firefighting, but the second most important thing was our first responder program, followed by wildfire concerns. I think, last time we did it five years ago, wildfire ranked number six, now it moved up to number three."
Beer and his staff are still crunching the numbers.
"My staff, my firefighters, I think there's about 30 of us here that are taking this information, putting it together and building the next five years goals and objectives and critical tasks, based on the community's input."
Beer said community concerns had more to do with training up the firefighters from the EMT level to paramedic and about continuing to improve the speed of their response. Beer plans to sit down with Hutch Post next month once all the conclusions are clear to go into more detail.