The public is getting the chance to learn about the department's plans for the future.

The Sparks Fire Department wrapped up their first of many community engagement meetings on Monday.

The public is getting the chance to learn about the department's plans for the future, and sharing concerns or suggestions that could help with the planning process.

Sparks Fire is giving an overview of their operations, introducing team members, giving a tour of the station, and sharing any future plans and their eight goals for the department.

"Our goals are to innovate our service delivery, look at doing things differently than we've done it before, to measure our performance, to just strengthen our infrastructure which includes not just our facilities, but our apparatus and our communications system," said Walt White, Fire Chief for Sparks Fire Department.

White says they also want to prepare our community for any major disasters and wildfire season, maintain collaborative management relationships, monitor and improve firefighter health and wellness, develop their work force and inspire and promote their mission driven culture.

And as far as future plans, he tells us in July they are excited to possibly reinstate transporting ambulance services, "Which I believe will be the most impactful service enhancement that we've provided the community in decades."

Chief White says they recently put a new truck in service at the station after spending a couple of years buying and designing the right one, but this is only the beginning.

"We are in the process of phasing out our older engines that they no longer make parts for and replacing our entire fleet with Rosenbauer units," White explains.

With all these goals and plans in place, Sparks Fire hopes to learn which ones concern community members the most.

"So, we have a survey which is to help us identify what's most important, what services we provide are most important to the community and then to ask them to help us prioritize our eight major goals," he said.

Chief White says after the first few meetings they will look over all the collected surveys and figure out which concerns should be prioritized over others.