The Fort Saskatchewan fire department will soon have some new faces joining their team.
The city recently approved the hiring of six new fulltime firefighters, a safety codes officer, and an emergency managment position.
"The new hires will give us the ability to staff a second fire truck within the city," said fire chief Todd Martens. "We will be able to have two vehicles on scene for any major accident or fire call we go to."
Martens add that this will also help the department's ability to respond to more than one call at a time.
The fire department already has the second fire truck and the proper equipment ready to go. Martens is hopeful things will be able to get organized quickly once the hires are made official.
"We're hoping that, as soon as we get through the process of the hiring and interviews, we will be able to hit the ground running in the first week of October," said Martens. "Both trucks will be operational and ready to go."
As for how much this will cost the city, Mayor Gale Katchur says there won't be any tax increases to help pay for the hires.
"Out of our new growth assessment there was an additional $1.2 million that hadn't been accounted for," said Katchur. "Because we have this new tax money from industry, businesses, and homeowners we were able to put the money aside."
This is just one of 27 recommendations put forward by the fire department in their fire services master plan that was presented to council back in March.
One of the other big things to come out of that plan was a need for a second fire station, something we should be hearing more about later in the year.
"Council will be discussing and debating the capital budget in late October and at that point in time council will make a decision on when we want to start the design process and then put the funding into the budget to have the new fire hall constructed," said Katchur.
Though there is still plenty of work left to do to ensure that the fire department is well-adapted to a growing Fort Saskatchewan, Martens believes this is a good start.
"This is a big step for the City of Fort Saskatchewan...It was the right decision that council made to help with staffing levels and hopefully that will continue into the future."