The Fargo City Commission met on Monday, May 12, 2025, at 4:15 PM in City Commission Chambers. The meeting included an executive session (4:20-4:53 PM) for attorney consultation regarding litigation at 501 Main Avenue, then reconvened publicly at 5:00 PM. The Commission honored retiring Fire Chief Steve Dirksen, discussed proposed fiber optic right-of-way agreements with Ubiquity and Gateway Fiber, received the 2024 Fire Department Annual Report, and heard public comment regarding police use of force. The meeting adjourned at 6:28 PM.
Good evening. We'll call the meeting to order. I invite you to join us with the Pledge of Allegiance. Roll call, please. Coal Pack. Here. Pepcorn. Strand. Here. Turn bright. Here. Mahoney. Here. Good evening. Tonight we're going to take a moment to honor a leader who has made a lasting impact on the safety and strength of our city. Fargo Chief, uh, fire Fargo Fire Chief, Steve Dirksen. Under Chief Dirksen's leadership, the Fargo Fire Department has grown stronger, more efficient, and better equipped to serve our residents. His leadership also guided the department to a Class 1 ISO ready, the highest possible fire protection designation. This mark of excellent not only reflects in the top tier department, but also delivers real savings to the Fargo homeowners through reduced insurance cost. Chief Starkson legacy is one of service innovation and unwavering commitment to public safety. Chief Street Dirksen. My career started in a volunteer fire department in 1989 in Rock Valley, Iowa, where I grew up. And then I saw an advertisement for uh the firefighter position in the city of Sioux Falls. I took a test. There was about 700 folks that sat down for the initial test, and I was fortunate enough to be one of the ten people out of that group that got hired for a career in the fire service. While I was there, the fire chief was in place. He was going to be there for a while. There was a whole group of us that were about the same age. I made a decision to kind of explore things and see where where we were at. And uh the job in Fargo opened up, put an application in, and the city of Fargo welcomed me in for a uh interview, and I was selected as the fire chief in 2011. The great thing about the fire services over the years, uh, we've continued to use technology to develop and make the profession safer. So we've you know gone to the improvements in turnout gear. I believe there's probably been about five or six iterations of improvements in the standard of turnout gear over the 36 years that I've been in the fire service. We've also improved, you know, what the health and wellness of firefighters and making sure that we have policies in place to make sure that firefighters do things and operate in a safe manner. The trucks that are out there today are changing all the time. I started on a gas-driven uh truck and moved on to diesel trucks and now with the emissions, and then just overall in the building classifications and and uh the code enforcement within the fire service, making sure that we build buildings as safe as possible, uh, first of all for the occupants and then for the firefighters that would have to operate in them. Adding the fire station eight this last year was a big accomplishment within the city. That was one of the questions that was always asked of me when I got here is when is station eight going to happen. We are a large city that really comprises multiple cities in the region here. And we've all made the decision that you know what we can work better together if we train together and do things like that, knowing that not all of us are gonna have all of the resources to handle every situation. So I worked really hard over the last number of years with the different fire chiefs in the region to ensure that we have a strong relationship for mutual aid, uh, automatic aid, and then also developing the joint fire training academy with West Fargo initially, and then adding more hit here last year. You know, it's been great within the city of Fargo. I was welcomed early on uh by all city departments. Uh we worked together, we tried to figure out how we could uh operate, try to make sure that we all receive the needs that we have. You know, I think of working with Ben Dow as we purchase our trucks, and I would think about working with HR as we added people, uh, working closely with the police department. I never thought over the the last 36 years uh that we would be buying ballistic gear for our firefighters, and now we have that on our trucks uh to protect them just because of the change in the landscape. But just making sure that we can operate safely and protect the citizens as best as possible. I'm very very proud of the part of the spot where we're where I'm leaving uh the department. We have great leadership internally. They're great people.