FIRES

As numbers of interested applicants have fallen in the past three decades, the call volume to volunteer re departments has tripled, Quinn said. e industry also struggles to recruit and retain women and people of color.

Only 11.6% of career re ghters were Hispanic or Latino, 8.5% were Black and 1.3% were Asian, according to the most recent data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Women make up about 4% of career

200 residents south of Castle Rock, doesn’t have the sta to plan out development like a large city would, the town’s attorney noted during an April 6 town council meeting. e town doesn’t have an o cial who can evaluate the developer’s design plan.

“What your (town) code says is the town planner shall approve or deny the site plan,” Dan Krob, who provides attorney services to the town, said at the April 6 meeting. “We don’t have a town planner.” e town also brought in Sam Doyle, who said he’s a former president of a nancial rm called D.A. Davidson, to help choose a planner. e council voted 6-1 to appoint Doyle to “interview and vet” potential planners, with council representation in the interview process, to make a recommendation to council.

From a short list of potential planners, the council will choose whom to appoint to serve as the town planner for the truck stop proposal.

“We were one of the big underwriters” of metro districts “in the whole state,” Doyle told the council.

(Metro districts are a type of government entity that carries out some government functions, such as the Highlands Ranch Metro District that oversees some services in that community.)

Zoning already changed

In the past, on smaller projects, the lack of a planner hasn’t come into play, Krob has said.

“So we have historically forgone the planner, used the planning commission and their expertise to give a recommendation to council for the decision,” Krob said at the April 6 meeting. A planning commission is a group of residents who are appointed to advise council on development matters.

But the land that would house the re ghters and 11% of volunteer re ghters, the National Fire Protection Agency reported in 2021.

Leaders also called for the need to implement building regulations that would protect growing communities on the edge of wildland.

Michele Steinberg, director of wild re for the National Fire Protection Association, called for a universal code that would require all homes and businesses in the wild re-prone areas to adhere to re-resistant building standards.

“Unfortunately, time and time again, what we see is that communities rebuild in the same way in the same areas as those that burned to