A (3:03)

Okay, so I was kind of picking up as you were explaining more, but you said Black Swan and I'm thinking about like a ballet movie. This sounds like something different. Give us a little more context.

B (3:16)

So the Black Swan, it's all about rare and unexpected events, and they all have massive impacts on how we, how we do business. One of our recent examples of that would be like Covid. No one was prepared for that. But if you go back and you do the. You look back and you have that 2020 hindsight, it's, well, we should have prepared for that. We should have done things differently. No one knows those events are coming. But we need to make sure that we have our strategic reserves. We need to make sure that we have our resources, our pooling of resources and standardizing things to be ready for those one offs.

A (3:54)

Okay, awesome. I just like googled it here on my device as you were talking and looks cool. Gonna add it to my reading list. Thank you. Good recommendations from both of you. All right, my next question. Adam, I'm going to let you go first. If you could instantly be good at something new, what would you pick?

B (4:14)

So I'm really hands on kind of guy. I like to do things with my hands, and I've always had an interest in learning how to weld. It sounds completely off the wall. It's not something that I do every day. Obviously, I sit in an office most days, but welding or something with my hands has always been an interest to me.

A (4:30)

Okay. That's like a big emerging profession. It's like we have a shortage of welders. I think in, in the workforce, you could probably have like a second career.

B (4:44)

Adam, I wouldn't go that far.

A (4:47)

Okay. All right, Randy, what about you? If you could instantly be good at something new, what would you pick?

C (4:54)

Well, I thought about this and, you know, really to be good at, like being a mechanic, working on the vehicle, my car, my truck. There's always something that needs to be worked on instead of paying someone to do simple tasks. I wish I was good at working on, you know, basic oil changes, different things on the family vehicles.

A (5:21)

Yeah, that's. Both of you had really practical responses. You know, I was thinking along the lines of like, I want to be Taylor Swift and up on stage and being amazing. But I love that you both had like, really thoughtful, practical responses that make a lot more sense for getting by in life. So thank you for bringing it back down to earth. All right, one more question for each of you. Randy, tell us about a favorite travel destination.

C (5:51)

Well, not a specific location, but beaches. I really like visiting Florida, but beaches in general. I like to be around water, beaches and just being outside. So anytime I can get somewhere where it's warmer than Kansas, 70, 80, 90 degrees, 100 degrees. I definitely prefer heat over cold weather. So if I can get down to Florida or anywhere with the beach, I'm happy.

A (6:20)

Yeah, as somebody who recently relocated to Minnesota, I feel this deeply. So thank you. Adam, what about you? What's your favorite travel destination?

B (6:30)

You know, Randy kind of stole my answer there, too. My family and I, we. We like to do the beach and everything around water. So we, we go to Florida. We went to Cancun last year. And then if we can't make it to the beach, we will usually go boating somewhere. So any, any destination with water.

A (6:51)

Okay. Well, thanks to both of you for just playing our lightning round. Some fun questions to get you warmed up. And now we're going to get into the heart of our interview. So we're talking today about fire district consolidation. Always like to ask our guests to just tell us a little bit more about you and your career path. So I'm going to ask each of you to just give us a quick rundown of the path that you took that led you into your current roles. And Randy will let you go first.

C (7:18)

Okay. So I got my master's in public administration at Wichita State University, and I've been in local government for 25 years now. So I kind of started as a budget analyst at the unified government of Wyandotte County, Kansas City, Kansas. Such a long name for a entity. But after that, I became a city administrator in Fredonia, Kansas for a few years and then moved to Western Kansas to be HR Director, Assistant county administrator in Fenney County, Kansas, which is Garden City, and then spent 10 years at as the county administrator in Fenney county before coming to Reno county six years ago. I got here in February 2020 and have loved every minute of it since I've moved here to Reno County.

A (8:09)

So refreshing to hear someone say that they love their job. So I'm eager to hear more about your work as we get into our conversation. But, Adam, what about you? Tell us about your career path.

B (8:20)

So I joined the Air Force pretty much right out of high school. And doing that, I used my GI Bill to go to school and get a degree. After I finished that degree, I got out of the Air Force and I actually joined the Hutchinson Police Department here in Reno county and then when the emergency management job came open, I applied for that because that's what I was doing in the Air Force, applied for that and here I am 10 years later.

A (8:47)

Awesome. Well, thank you. So now we are going to get into the heart of our conversation. Randy, just kind of to set the context, I'm going to ask you to tell us a little bit more about Reno County. Just tell us a little bit about the community for folks who maybe have not had a chance to visit there aren't as familiar with Kansas.

C (9:06)

All right. Reno county is in south central Kansas and the county seat is Hutchinson, which is about 50 miles northwest of the city of Wichita. Reno County is 62,000 people in population. Our organization has just over 400 full time employees. The county is the, there's 18 departments in the county and we have the 11th most diverse economy in the US because we have agriculture, advanced manufacturing, we have some energy projects, we have a little bit of everything. So our economy doesn't depend on just one. Like for example Wichita has aviation. They depend on Reno County. Hutchinson does not depend on any one industry has a great locate, great location. We also have a, as we talked earlier about liking lakes or water Cheney reservoirs here in Reno county we have a great tourist attractions Cosmosphere which is I believe other than in Russia, the only space exhibit that has both American and and Russian artifacts in it. And we have Prairie Dunes, kind of a national golf course that hosts PGA tours Stratica where you can go down under the ground to visit old salt mines. So it's a very unique county community in the middle of Kansas.

A (10:37)

Yeah, thanks for sharing all that. You know, I used to work in Kansas. I've spent some time in Hutchison, but I learned some new things. I didn't realize that fun fact about the diversity of your economy. That's pretty interesting and I'll just share for our listeners. Part of the reason we wanted to visit with you all is that we've gotten some feedback from our audience that they're interested in having more content about rural communities. And your Reno is kind of interesting. I mean you've got, you know, Hutchinson's a thriving mid size community. You're definitely not the smallest Keoni in terms of population in Kansas. But the topic we're talking about today is kind of has a rule bent to it with rule fire districts. So let's get into the heart of that discussion. So consolidated Reno county fire district number one went into effect just this year and on January 1, 2026. But I know from my advanced conversations with you all that the conversation leading up to this change about 10 years ago. So, Adam, I'm going to ask you, take us back to the beginning. Describe how fire service in rural Reno county operated before the consolidation and what challenges motivated you to look at consolidation.

B (11:53)

The autonomy of fire districts have been a hot topic for decades. They talked about the autonomy of fire districts and who manages the money. And prior to this consolidation, there is eight fire districts, eight in Reno County. It was overseen by the emergency management office but ultimately worked for the board of county commissioners. And that governing board acted as a fire board. So these eight rural fire districts, they had 14 stations covering 1100 square miles roughly of the county. And then each district had their own volunteer fire chief and assistant chief. And then the firefighters were, they're volunteer firefighters, but they get a stipend per call. So back in oh, 2016, 2017, merging of the fire districts and increasing service became a really hot topic. So we started reaching out to all, all kinds of different training, consulting companies, people that could give an in depth look of the fire service and look at what opportunities we have to improve services to the community. So in 2019, we actually contracted with a company called Five Bugle out of Wisconsin to perform a fire study countywide for the fire districts.

A (13:16)

Yeah, you said it became a hot topic. Can you tell us more about that? Like what, what issues were rising this to a level of discussion in the public agenda?

B (13:27)

So there's training concerns, what's the minimum training standard? There's always going to be equipment concerns, budgetary concerns, overall management concerns of the fire districts and how involved some of the volunteers might be. You see it in every sector of, of the community. But the volunteerism in, in this day and age, it's starting to dwindle. So we wanted to have a plan in place when we, we had less volunteers, how we can pool those resources, not only the, the individuals, but financial resources and improve services for the county as a whole.

A (14:07)

Yeah, awesome serenity. Can you tell us more about your process to analyze the options and prepare the recommendations for your county commission? So

C (14:21)

I think one unique thing about that I'll kind of add in here with this. During this time, the county, Reno county went from three commissioners to five commissioners. And so when this, the five bugle study was completed in 2021, there were three commissioners and wanting to look at, there was a list of options with that study of what we could do or what would make, as Adam said, what would make the Fire service more sustainable and better for the future. And everything takes time, time. So we were never in a rush to kind of push any recommendations, any of the recommendations. So we kind of started small. And Adam, of course, jump in anytime if you want to get into more details about this or if I miss something. But kind of from the beginning, consolidation was kind of like a bad word. You know, it's like, do not say that. Because the commission at that time and the fire districts with, you know, kind of their hate to say silo mentality, but their, their territorial rights, didn't want to talk about consolidation. So Adam and his staff started working on a process to how can we make things better with the fire service based on the consultant study before, but to kind of possibly lead to a future discussion of consolidation if things went well and led to that, that path. So Adam, do you want to maybe explain kind of some of those first steps?

B (16:00)

So in 2022, after that consolidation or after that five bugle plan went to the commission, we hired a fire administrator. We didn't call that position a fire chief due to any negative connotation it could have on our rural fire district. Our rural fire districts, they're very proud. We have a lot of volunteers. They've done a lot of good work in the community. We just needed to get them to the next step. So we didn't want to hurt any feelings or chase anyone off by hiring a fire chief. So when we hired that fire administrator, we wanted all the districts and volunteers working towards the common goal. So we really set some priorities for the fire. Training was the number one goal to get out to the fire districts. We implemented quarterly training and minimum training standards with the blessing of the fire chiefs. We looked at infrastructure and equipment needs and developed a countywide capital improvement plan, which we hadn't previously had. We looked at what effective response force might be. The effective response force is how many people do you need on a fire to ensure that everyone's safe and, and our homeowner, property owner, our citizens are taken care of, and then promote the best, up to date and consistent best practices for the fire service. What we had ran into is there's a lot of things that were Learned in the 80s and 90s and there's a lot better ways to do things, a lot, a lot safer ways to do things. And we just had not been training on those or those districts had not been training on those. So we brought a new level of professionalism into the volunteer districts. And all of this really circled around safety. We want to Be sure that our volunteer firefighters are safe. We want to be sure that our citizens are safe, and we want to give them the tools to do it.

A (17:51)

Yeah. And that's. I want to make sure. I understand, like, that's what you're describing of implementing these best practices. Like, that was all work you were doing ahead of the vote on consolidation, just working collaboratively with the existing.

B (18:05)

That's correct. That. That was before consolidation even got brought to the rural fire districts or the merger talk even got brought to the rural fire districts.

A (18:13)

Yeah. I mean, was that intentional? Was that part of a strategy to build release.

B (18:19)

The strategy was to get everyone on the same page and start operating as one large group and then make sure it was working well. And then if we could show that, hey, everyone's working together at that point, why does it not make sense to merge the districts? Because really it's. We're just managing a larger. A larger district, same number of resources, but we can move them like chess pieces instead of having to fall in those imaginary district lines.

A (18:51)

Yeah. Before we move on, Randy, I'm going to ask you, like, can you just give us kind of a just government lesson here? Like this question of consolidation, that was a decision that landed with your county commission. It didn't require a public vote. Like, can you just kind of describe the authority and the decision making process there?

C (19:12)

Right. So counties in Kansas, you know, provide, by statute, provide fire service for the counties. And they fear there's no one way it has to be done. So Reno county was a little bit unique, having the eight fire districts. A lot of counties, for example, will have fire boards that are separate from the county commission. So they may have different fire districts, but they have their own boards. So they're really completely separate, even though the funding. And they go through a county. But so Reno counties, you know, the county commission are the fire boards all as one. So consolidating, they. The county commission can make that decision without a vote because they are the boards. They're just now saying, instead of us being the heads of eight boards, we're now going to have one. One district. So it allowed with the statute because you didn't have to talk to eight different board of directors. There was only one board. So they had the ability to just make that decision internally and to combine, consolidate the districts. There was a. It has to be kind of. It has to be published in the newspaper. And there's a protest period that if any one of the districts or any voters in that district wanted to sign a petition, it could it would then be brought to a vote of the. Of that district. So not each district had to join. So if one of the eight had a petition, they didn't want to be a part of the consolidation. They could have signed petitions and forced a vote of the people. That did not take place. No one protested. I know Adam and his staff were out, out working, doing kind of town halls, meeting with all the volunteers to make sure all the questions and concerns were answered before it got to that point. So that there would be support and understanding of the reason to have consolidation.

A (21:20)

Yeah, thanks. I just think that's really helpful context. So you all did a great job of kindly in the foundation of this process that you did your consultant study then, you know, worked kind of incrementally with the districts to get everyone on the same page. But this work culminated in a consolidation vote to the county Commission in November of 2024. That consolidation just went into effect in the last month or so here. So can you tell us a little bit about what that implementation process was like over the last year?

C (21:52)

So over the last year, a lot of internal workings, budget, the financial system, making sure we had everything under, I guess, the financial system as an example, eight different districts now, they all had different funds. So we had to work with the county treasurer, county clerk, emergency management to make sure that we had addressed all the issues with the consolidation internally on the financial system, the budget coming up, and then notifying taxpayers when they got new budgets. So in Kansas currently have like a revenue neutral rate. And so we have to. Then the county clerk has to send out for taxing entities what the taxes would be, property taxes for the next year if the maximum budget was adopted. So last year when we sent that out, we had to, because you also have to show the past year for all those eight districts, we had to in the notice, show with the consolidated fire district what their new mill levy was going to be. But it also showed what each eight individual districts would be if they were the same. They weren't consolidated because we were still following in the middle of the protest period. So a lot of the processes, what we were working on, implementation, was making sure we had all the finances, the budget, and kind of chain of command in order internally before January hit. So that when January hit, we had all the money in place and the processes. And I'm sure Adam could probably add some of what he dealt with with the actual district.

B (23:40)

In addition to the budgetary piece, which is huge for us. There's a lot of things that we don't Think about our insurance provider had to change, our workman's comp had to change. Every, every time someone calls into our 911 center, there's a response plan that's pulled up and it tells the dispatchers who to page, what resources need to go to every call. So we had to touch every single response plan that was in there so we can be sure that the correct piece of apparatus is getting, getting sent. In addition to that, all our volunteer districts have a firefighter relief association. So that firefighter relief association actually provides some, some benefits to the firefighters in retirement and then accident and sickness policies. So we had to be sure that there is a FRA board that was formed so they could take care of the new fra. And we also looked at truck and gear committees. So there's a committee of people now who select what kind of apparatus they get for the county and then what sort of safety equipment they want to use. So there's a whole lot of pieces that were coming together in the past year to make sure that we're going to be successful for 26.

A (24:56)

Yeah, thank you for elaborating on that. You brought up some things that I wouldn't have thought of and clearly you all were really intentional about thinking about in that process. Adam, I kind of want to, I want to talk about the people side of this. I mean, you've mentioned several times the volunteer firefighters, and I know that often volunteers have deep personal histories with their districts. And how did you honor that history while still asking people to move forward together?

B (25:23)

They all have pretty deep roots established in, in their districts, in their communities. And, and why they're volunteering their time is because they want to serve their communities. So we needed to go show them that when we consolidate, it's not about loss, it's about being able to serve your community better in a larger capacity. So we focused on the growth of the district and focused on how change is necessary for growth. And it's not a loss of control or loss of their past, its growth and in a new future. So we showed them that the benefits of consolidation outweigh the pitfalls for long term sustainability. When you look at our rural areas with really limited resources, Consolidated fire district really creates a more sustainable and resilient firefighting force and it allows the fire departments or fire districts to respond better to the community needs. So we really had to focus on creating a stronger, more staffed, better equipped fire service that'll protect Reno county with increased efficiencies and effectiveness and not focus on the loss. And it took A lot of meetings and a lot of time to get, get people on board, but I think they realize this is what's best for the citizens. Something unique we did is when we were developing our, our new logo, our Reno County Fire District 1 logo is we actually had a vote on that with the existing fire chiefs and we hid a number eight in the fire helmet of the logo representing that we came from eight fire districts and merged into one. So we want to make sure that the history is not lost with them.

A (27:21)

Yeah, that's very clever. Thanks for sharing that. Well, I want to give both of you a chance to just reflect on this process and what you learned and, you know, give some nuggets of your wisdom to our listeners who might be looking at consolidation process, maybe in the fire service, maybe other types of government services. I'll ask both of you, is there anything that you wish you had handled differently in this process?

C (27:52)

Well, I guess I'll start. First of all, I wish this would have been able to been done quicker. I know that kind of sounds negative. It's not because I think we did a great job. But knowing that the five bugle study was done five years ago, six years ago, and just the amount of the process, I think it takes a lot of patience. So I, I kind of. There's parts of me that wishes maybe we would have pushed it a little bit harder. But I think we did a great job of taking time to communicate, go through the changes with commission going from three to five again. And from the original study, there's only one commissioner that was on that on the board at that time that's still a commissioner. So I think if we would have maybe, maybe pushed a little bit harder, we could have done it got this moved quicker before some of the commissioners that originally liked this idea left the commission, if that makes sense, to where we wouldn't have had to almost re, you know, inform each new commissioner what we're doing, what we've been working on for multiple years. But I think it's gone very well. Something that I'm particularly proud that it worked is just the amount of time. On the flip side, the amount of time that emergency management, the Adam and Travis did to individually meet with all the volunteers and keeping the commission very informed every so often about what's going on so that they were never in the dark and that the volunteers had a buy in and had a say so that it didn't look like we were trying to have some kind of power grab because it wasn't, you know, for authority. It didn't matter if it was eight districts or one district. It was just, you know, better for the overall system to have one district. But it wasn't a power grab anyway. So I think I'm particularly proud of all the communication that emergency management did to make this a success to this point. And I'm proud that the county commission, with the changes with and the commissioners, that they all stayed on the same page and kept the momentum going to get to this consolidation.

A (30:30)

I think that sentiment of impatience, Randy, will be really relatable to our public servant listeners. And yet, as you talked, you're describing this communication process that was clearly linchpin of your success. So as you reflect, do you think there's anything that you could have done differently that would have accelerated the process?

C (30:54)

Probably had more meetings with the commission early on and really explained, you know, because there was fear of consolidation at the beginning. But maybe, you know, kind of in hindsight, if we would have kept explaining why, you know, breaking down the silos and really getting everyone on the same page might have, you know, sped things up. But I don't know if that would have made any difference. It's hard to tell from looking back, but I don't know that I would really change anything other than maybe put a little bit more pressure on the commission in a study session.

A (31:33)

Sure makes sense. Adam, what about you? Anything that you would have handled differently?

B (31:39)

The only thing I would have handled differently is communicated with every firefighter in every district quicker than what we did. So when we first started looking at this process, we had some meetings with the fire chiefs, and we. We filled them in. We let them ask questions. We told them, hey, take it back to your districts and bring any questions to us, and we can get those answered or work towards an answer together. And we realized that that doesn't always trickle down to the lowest level. So I wish we would have had the meetings with the individual fire districts up front, and I think we would have gotten the buy in faster. There was already some ideas in some of the firefighters heads that why we were doing this or that we're. They were looking at it more as loss. But when we took the time we spent between two and three hours at every fire district and let them ask any questions they could have and got them answers. So he's put a significant amount of time communicating with them. I just wish we would have communicated with them a little quicker than what we did.

A (32:42)

Yeah. Is there anything that you all are particularly proud of that worked well? I mean, we've Talked a lot about your attention to detail in your communication and outreach. Anything else that worked really well that you're proud of that you'd recommend to our listeners.

B (33:00)

So I feel like we kind of created a roadmap for other departments, other cities, other counties to follow. When we started looking at merging fire districts, I really couldn't find a professional that's done it before that's gone out and been successful. So I think we're pretty proud that we created this roadmap. We got the buy in from the firefighters and the fire districts and we got the buy in from the commission and we're going to show that we're going to be successful.

A (33:32)

Yeah, it's great work. Randy, looking ahead, how will you know that this worked? What does better fire service look like five or ten years from now in Reno County?

C (33:44)

So what I think will show that it worked is especially as we have the capital improvement plan and for trucks, vehicles, equipment. So we have now we have one set plan for all districts. I think what's going to show that it worked is we're going to get everyone outfitted properly, all equal across the county, and have the right pieces of machinery, fire, you know, trucks in the right locations so that when fires take place, the right people, the right machines or equipment will show up on time instead of in the past. Where you have one main district that gets called in this area, then they have to call for assistance, mutual aid and another. I think what's going to show that it worked is just that the fire. The what would be better fire services, that we're all on the same page, getting quicker responses, more coordinated responses and hopefully less large scale fires because we get them put out quicker. And another thing would be, you know, the level of volunteers will go up, that we won't lose a lot of volunteers because they're upset because Fire District 6 is no longer this city's supposed fire district that they're part of Reno County Fire District 1. So I think showing that success is the volunteer staying and we're getting more volunteers. And then people are proud to say, yes, I am part of Fire District 1. So that's what I see in the next five to 10 years. It'll take time, but as people fall into the identity of Fire District 1 and the volunteers continue to grow, fire chiefs are happy and keeping us informed.

A (35:43)

That's great. Adam, anything that you want to add?

B (35:46)

The. The biggest thing I want to add is when someone calls 911 in our county, they're going to get the same response Regardless of where they live, all these imaginary boundaries that we once had are gone and everyone has a custom response plan to their emergency. So I think that's what's going to show success is when we have the right piece of equipment, right personnel showing up anytime our citizens call 911.

A (36:13)

Yeah, that's great. Well, I really appreciate you sharing this story with us. You know, this is one of those projects that you can look at on paper and say, yeah, this makes a lot of sense for all the reasons that you explained, but it's not easy. And others in your position might have said, this is too hard, let's work on something else. So I really applaud both of you for your patience and staying the course on this over about a decade of time. And I know it wasn't just the two of you, others on your teams who were involved and ultimately your governing body who lended their support. But I think it's just a great story of, you know, public servants looking at the way we deliver services in a new and innovative way. Is there anything else that you all want to share before we wrap up?

B (37:05)

I don't have anything.

C (37:07)

I would just say that communication is important and it's really, this is a long process and I know earlier I said I wish it was would have gone quicker, but being patient and always keeping communication lines open with governing body and fire districts and staff has been so important in making sure that this has gotten to the point that it is at today.

A (37:31)

That's great, Randy, thank you. Great message to wrap us up of the communication. Thanks so much to both of you for joining the govla podcast. Adam, we're going to let you have our closer. If you could be the Gov Luv dj, what song would you pick as our exit music for this episode?

B (37:49)

You know my four year old's been watching Trolls non stop for the past three days so that can't stop this feeling by Justin Timberlake stuck in my head right now. I'd like to share that with the audience.

A (38:00)

I love it. Give our thanks to your 4 year old please for helping us close out our episode that ends our episode today. Thanks so much to our guests from Reno County, Kansas, Randy Partington and Adam Weishar. Thank you to our audience for listening. You can reach us@elgl.org govlove or on social media at govlovepodcast. This has been Govlove, a podcast about local government. Nowhere to hide when I'm getting you close when we move well you already know Just imagine

C (38:54)

nothing I can see

A (38:56)

but you when you dance, dance, dance.