Waite Park Prepares To Hire Its First Full-time Fire Chief

WAITE PARK (WJON News) -- An area city is looking to make a big change to its fire department. The City of Waite Park plans to hire a full-time Fire Chief this spring. It will be the first time in the city's history that it will have a full-time leader for the fire department.

Mayor Ken Schmitt says having a full-time chief will help the city better support its operational needs and enhance community safety:

"A full-time Fire Chief will provide focused leadership with an emphasis on long-term strategy, recruitment, and organizational effectiveness to ensure the department can meet the community's evolving needs."

 

Waite Park has 18 part-time firefighters.

Currently, the city's fire department is made up of 18 part-time firefighters, and it has an agreement with the City of St. Cloud to provide additional support as needed.

Mayor Schmitt says ideally the city would like to have 30 firefighters, and the new full-time chief will help with education and recruitment efforts to get them to that number:

"It's always a challenge when you have an on-call fire department. The other thing is the ability for employers to let employees go when there is a fire call, and this will be an opportunity for a full-time chief to be able to go out and visit some of these businesses to see if we can't recruit more people."

He says the new chief will visit area technical colleges on educational days to recruit as well. The city plans to finalize the position description and requirements at Tuesday's council meeting before starting the search.