[Editor's Note: This is part 3 of a multi- part series of articles on almost six hours of Grant County Commission meetings on Feb. 11 and 13, 2025.)
By Mary Alice Murphy

This article on the Grant County Commission Feb, 11, 2025 work session begins the county department head reports.

Grant County Fire Chief Roger Groves spoke first.

"Currently I've been working on a project for assisting our state fire marshal with financial work," he said. "That's taken a considerable amount of time. We're coming to the end of that pretty quickly on a meeting with our support service representative."

Groves said he had a meeting with the Fire Marshal on the 17th, which would hopefully move the process along. He also noted the State Fire Marshal's office was in town to do inspections on the Upper Mimbres and Lower Mimbrees stations.

"I'm also currently helping out the departments with the Public Employees Retirement Association reports that will be coming due in March, and we're getting those prepared to be submitted to PERA."

He said the county chipper program has seen a bit of an increase and that people want it for longer than the three to four days they offered before. "So the last couple of times we've let the chipper out for about a week, which we were able to work into the schedule."

Groves said he continues to attend trainings and meetings with the volunteer fire departments, several times a month. "We're constantly doing training and looking for more training. We're getting our wildland training that is required, as well as refresher classes that are required to be held, and we're moving along very nicely with those, so that we can be ready. Wildland fire season never leaves here. It's always with us, and this year even more so, because we have drought."

He noted the Forest Service the previous week had taken the fire level from high to very high as far as fire danger and threat of fire. "We're meeting with some of the folks in the Forest Service, and with the rural chiefs later this month to discuss some strategy and tactics to address that."

He said the last item he had to report was a project that's been ongoing, "I got our county side-by-side. We're just about ready to to put it into effect for fire suppression, and if we need to bring out somebody up from the search and rescue or transport searchers in and out of the forest. Things that are pretty dry out there. As you know, our windy months are soon approaching, and if we don't see some moisture, I think we're going to have our hands full. I think all of our members recognize the conditions we're in."

He noted that they had see a number of structure fires in the past few weeks so the volunteers had also participated in suppression, as well as all the training.

Groves said he had not heard of the Forest Service's putting in any fire restrictions yet.

District 3 Commissioner Nancy Stephens said she had read about the chipper program. "What's the best way for the public to learn about and access that program?"

Groves replied: "Right now they call me or come see me at the office. I've been getting a number of phone calls about it. We are running some radio spots that are also advertising the chipper and my contact information. It was pointed out to me that we didn't have on the website, and so I'm looking into getting that added to the website so people how the whole program works."

Sheriff Raul Villanueva pointed out that his department also has a couple of side-by-sides that can be used for rescue work and fire suppression .

District 5 Commissioner Thomas Shelley thanked Groves for the update, and then asked: "How is the county sitting as far as recruitment to volunteer fire departments right now?"

Groves replied: "I don't have an accurate number to tell you. I'm sure that through our eight departments in the last month there's been some new members coming in. We typically see in the winter months kind of a decrease in activities. Therefore, we have a decrease in people that want to join up. But most of the department have enough members right now that they are meeting the requirements."

Shelley noted that since it's a volunteer aspect, "I'm wondering if we do enough to thank them publicly and acknowledge what they do for the citizens of our county. I'm wondering if there are any things we could do because it's hard to recruit for volunteer things."

Groves said: "Everybody who's volunteered for everything knows that, yes sir, and that this one takes a lot of time and training in addition."

Shelley said he would like to work on positive reinforcement for their service

"I try to do that every opportunity I get with our volunteers," Groves said. "I was a volunteer for many years. I still am with Tyrone. I'm sure that some sort of Recognition Day proclamation would probably go a long way. I would like to ask
our chiefs and some of our firefighters to attend. We don't see a lot of big attendance when we've asked them to come, because a lot of them are working. But we have also had some appreciation days and kind of a public show of equipment and things like that, where they set up at a location, and the public could come and see the equipment and talk with some of the firefighters. And I think that those were positive things. I do know from the emails and letters that I've been getting from the state level, there's some legislation being discussed about some tax incentives and things like that for the firefighters throughout the state. But I think anything that we can do would be a positive thing."

Shelley asked if they have done anything for someone who has gone above and beyond.

Groves said they had awarded some commendation bars last summer to some firefighters that were involved in a life-saving incident in the Mimbres Valley.

He noted they could also recognize years of service. "We've got some people have been doing it a long, long time, and maybe we we can have some of them come in and be at a commission meeting, and you can meet them, and we can recognize some of the long service of some of these folks. And there's a number out there involved a long time."

The next portion will begin with the report from the Detention Center.

To visit the previous articles, please go to https://www.grantcountybeat.com/news/news-articles/grant-county-commission-work-session-021125-part-1; and https://www.grantcountybeat.com/news/news-articles/grant-county-commission-work-session-021125-part-2