LAVFD Meeting 7-26-2018

Thank you to Bernie Digman for meeting notes.

DAC Fire Chief Hemple, county fire chief, explained what his office was doing to encourage volunteers. He explained that there would never be paid fire fighters at a level to provide needed services due to the expense. NMSU fire department is a state organization and is prohibited by statue to merge with the Las Alturas Fire Department. Chief Hemple and his staff are working to get the ISO organization to reevaluate the situation county-wide.

The issue that remains is the lack of participation by residents. We currently have two firefighters living in the district which includes all of the Talavera area and most of the Las Alturas area. That is only two homes with volunteers out of a total of slightly over 1200 homes (Talavera and Las Alturas combined). We have only one EMS volunteer from in-district. County-wide there are a number of volunteers who will be leaving within the next several months.

On a more pleasant note, LAVFD  Chief, Arnie Diaz, encouraged folks to come down and enjoy the Talavera FD basketball court with its new cement apron. He said folks can bring all the sidewalk chalk they want, just no paint.

2018-08-11: Addendum, Daren Bloomquist, Ass’t Fire Chief, LAVFD, has informed us we now have an additional volunteer from the Talavera neighborhood. That makes two volunteers from Talavera and one volunteer from Las Alturas.