By NICK GOSNELL
Hutch Post
HUTCHINSON, Kan. — Reno County Emergency Management Director Adam Weishaar facilitated a meeting last week with the county's fire chiefs to do fact-finding related to their reactions to the study put forth by Five Bugle earlier this month.
"That meeting took place on May 19th in the evening," Weishaar said. "That was between us, the county administrator's office, commissioner Friesen was there and then all the rural fire chiefs. Each district was represented. The fire chiefs actually had met on their own two days prior to that on May 17th."
A document has been produced as a result of that meeting that will be part of the county commission meeting on June 8th.
"They put a whole bunch of ideas into writing," Weishaar said. "I did a memorandum for record and we will be presenting that. I just sent that memorandum for record out to fire chiefs this morning for them to review."
Weishaar didn't want to go into the specifics of what was in the memo until the chiefs have seen it and signed off on it, but he did say they appeared to want to handle any adjustments to their departments themselves.
"The word accountability got used a whole lot," Weishaar said. "The chiefs want an opportunity to be able to hold themselves accountable."
The consultant seemed to support the idea of hiring a full-time paid fire chief to oversee these rural departments, but it isn't clear where the County Commission is on the issue and whether having the report in hand creates any sort of liability for the commission should they choose not to follow its recommendations.
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