GRANTS, N.M. - The City council meeting taking place on June 24 discussed to miscommunication concerning the fireworks ban as well as Grants Fire & Rescue statistics and new facility. During the executive session, the city council discussed the Pending or threatened Litigation Villar v. City of Grants.
Regarding charter compliance, councilman George Garcia said, “Its been fifty days since we addressed the filling of District 1 city council position. I’m just wondering if there’s any movement on that, sir.”
Mayor Erik Garcia responded, “I have not been able to fill that position… I’m still on the look.”
Fireworks
“As you know, we tried to move forward with banning certain fireworks,” Fire Chief Mike Maes said. “That didn’t go through as well as we thought it would.”
Chief Maes explained that they did ban the fireworks the previous week, however, there was “conflicting information from the State Fire Marshal’s Office and through the New Mexico Municipal League.” According to Chief Maes, the New Mexico Municipal League “guided” them in terms of the banning, but did not “touch base” with the New Mexico Fire Marshal’s Office. “[We were to] have the ordinance in place 20 days prior to the sale, not the holiday,” Maes said. “So, there was some misleading information and I did not catch it. And the New Mexico Municipal League, you know, they spoke out of turn. And I think they had good intentions, but that was the fallout.”
Due to this miscommunication, the ordinance to ban certain fireworks exists, but it is not enforceable due to a lack of alignment with state statutes and guidance from the Attorney General’s Office.
“Right now, I just expect the public [to] understand… where we’re at in society right now. We are dry,” Maes said. “[Supervise] your kids, [be] responsible adults. Understand the severity. We can ban every firework there is, from a firecracker to everything, but enforcing it… We’re going to have law enforcement running all over this town. It’s up to our citizens to really want to help out and not contribute to buyers.”
Grants Fire & Rescue
Chief Mike Maes gave the statistics for the past month. Grants Fire and Rescue has reportedly ran 151 EMS calls, the engine has responded to 183 incidents, there has been 2 structure fires, 18 inter facility transfers going from Cibola General Hospital to Santa Fe or Albuquerque.
The design construction for the new facility is “98% done” and expected to be complete in two to three weeks. After the design is complete, the department will give the document to the construction company, sign contracts, and the construction will begin. “I would love to say [it will be ready by] September,” Chief Maes said.
The new location with be at Elm Park, also known as Jelso Park, and will be funded by the State Capital Outlay money. “The reason we’re moving is up there is ISO looks at the fire station, where it’s located in the city, and how many rooftops… does that fire station serve in a one and a half mile radius. And moving that up there is going to serve a lot more rooftops; residents, businesses,” Chief Maes explained.
The department will serve more apartments, and as there are more structure fires in that areas, they will have a quicker response time.