From the Chief: Well as always there's a lot of things happening. In June of this year we saw a change in our ISO rating which was a significant improvement over our previous rating. While I cannot control what your insurance company does as far as acknowledging that change, I can tell you that if they are not, then you need to shop around for insurance as there are many companies out there that are acknowledging that improvement and cutting rates. We have entered into a collaborative agreement with Santa Ysabel reservation to provide them fire service. What this does for the residents of Intermountain is provide a second staffed station along highway 79 for a faster more effective response instead of responding from our highway 78 station. This will improve the response times for our residents and the residents on the Santa Ysabel Reservation and increase the effectiveness of that response. For those off the reservation this will have an impact on your ISO rating eventually as well. We have graduated another academy class. On October 30th, Academy 7 had their graduation ceremonies and we put another 20 firefighters onto the roster. We are due to receive our new water tender mid November and are expecting it any day. Operationally, incidents have risen, even though we have seen a fairly light wild land fire year. I want to caution everyone not to let your guard down as this is a "La Nina" year and while we have received some rains a couple of late blowing Santa Ana's can quickly reverse those effects. We have typically had late large wind driven wildfires during "La Nina" years and the potential is still out there. Like everyone else we are facing a tough budget year. We cut our budget by over 52% which means we are already short the minimum funds needed to carry us through the next year. On top of that we are still looking at an additional ten thousand dollar shortfall of funds based on current revenues. While none of our budget goes to labor costs, i.e. payroll, there are areas that are either reduced or not funded such as training, some personal protective equipment and items like that. Again while I know these are tough economic times for everyone, any help that you can provide in these areas would be highly appreciated by all. On the County Fire Authority front, there have been some changes as well. The Fire Authority has moved from the Department of Planning and Land Use to the Public Safety Group which are emergency service minded people and this should enhance our interaction with the county and improve service. There are many more changes coming down the road and I am always ready to sit and discuss these with anyone that would like more information. Yours in Fire & Life Safety Cary J. Coleman, Fire Chief