The Fargo City Commission met on Monday, October 16, 2023, at 5:00 p.m. in the Commission Chambers after holding an executive session from 4:00 to 4:45 p.m. to discuss threatened litigation pertaining to 501 Main Avenue. The commission unanimously approved the consent agenda, conducted three public hearings, reviewed the General Fund budget status, approved committee appointments, and received liaison reports. All formal votes were 5-0.
Note: There is a discrepancy between sources regarding firefighter numbers. The video and minutes refer to 12 graduates (6 Fargo, 6 West Fargo) from the Joint Training Academy, while Commissioner Kolpack's liaison report states that 5 recruits started a new academy that day.
As a recipient of its recognition of Special Achievement Award, which highlights creativity, innovation, vision, and accomplishments of practitioners in engineering, design, and construction industries. The award was presented to the members of the Diversion Authority in the Corps at a ceremony last weekend in Boston. On September 29th, 12 new firefighters graduated from the Joint Training Academy. Six for the Fargo Fire Department and six from the West Fargo Fire Department. These recruits completed a 15-week program to help develop skills to serve Fargo and West Fargo communities. In this video, you will hear from the Fargo recruits on why they chose a career in firefighting and see some of the intense training as they did throughout the Academy. Our comms team made this a little longer because we have some time to make up before we get to 515. And that will help us get there. Plus, it's a good story, right? It's a nice video. And we we see this as a great opportunity for you guys to start a career together because we're neighbors. And we're gonna do nothing but work more closely together. We're very unique in that we do this joint academy, and we're the only ones in the state that are doing something like this. But really it's the model moving forward for what we're looking at in consolidated operations between two cities and how we keep helping each other as we grow and help with our shortcomings. This is only something that's building us further and further into the future. Well, I'm originally from Memphis, Tennessee, so I moved up here in 2018 for all my kids and my wife, and we love the city. We love the family aspect of Fargo, and so we stayed here and I want to make Fargo a better place. I played college football. So that team aspect is something I've been craving ever since uh I graduated college. Um then when I saw that the fire department was hiring, just thought, why not? It's Captain Whirling or I said, I mean, this is the ultimate team sport, um, because you're relying on the person next to you for everything really. Um I was born here, so I I like Fargo. Um, I want to give back to the community. Um, so this is my way of finding a job, finding a career that's stable and knowing what it stands for. Something that draws me to fire is the the team aspect of it, and of course, helping your community. That's something that I've kind of been doing all these years. I love being physically active. It's something I'd always wanted to do, but I hadn't seen a lot of women in the field. Um, you know, growing up in small towns, it's very male dominated. So when I saw, you know, more and more women in our community getting involved, and uh my kids are getting older, I decided it was a good time to jump in and give it a shot. Well, I I mean I I do like the Fargo area, uh, and I was in the area at the time. And the fact that Fargo kind of has their own in-house training really helped because just because I don't have any experience firefighting prior to this, so well, I've always wanted to help people. Um, I like the team aspect of the job, um, hanging out with like people who have the same goals as you and I wanted a career firefighter job. Uh they more opportunity to grow. My dad and a couple uncles and some cousins uh were on a volunteer fire department back home. So growing up, I was always around that, and I was kind of an adrenaline junkie, so I wanted to do something exciting. Um, I've never wanted a job where I sat down and was bored all day. I wanted to be a firefighter because it's different. Every day you meet new people every day, you have different situations, different challenges. Um, and I knew that I would never get bored. Firefighting has always just been a dream of mine since a kid. And so uh my dad is a volunteer firefighter. I did volunteer firefighting before this, and um really just noticed I enjoyed that more than my day-to-day job. And so when the opportunity came up, I took a jump and said, let's uh let's give this a try. We always wanted to help people. I wanted to be a part of a team that was almost more of a family opposed to just going to work and leaving at the end of the day. Uh, I just wanted to be a part, something bigger than myself. The big thing about choosing Fargo for me was uh I grew up in the area and I always felt like it was good to stay close to home and serve the community that I grew up around and uh how fast Fargo's growing and the members of the department are huge for me. I mean, everybody likes to train, everybody likes to teach the younger generation coming up. A lot of my family members are actually firefighters.