The Estes Valley Fire Protection District Board approved a timeline for hiring its next fire chief and formally adopted revised language in the district’s wildfire resiliency code, two actions that will shape the district’s leadership and wildfire mitigation work over the coming months.
The board voted at its March 23 meeting to move forward with a chief recruitment plan laid out by Interim Chief Warren Jones that could bring finalists to Estes Park for in-person interviews in mid-June, with a final selection possible by July and a new chief on board by August or early September.
The board also adopted the Colorado Wildfire Resiliency Code with local modifications after working through a series of edits intended to make the code clearer and more practical for property owners.
Fire chief search plan moves forward
The board approved the search schedule and process, which began with a kickoff meeting with the district’s consultant, GMP Consultants, March 9. The engagement is estimated to cost between $25,000 and $30,000.
A representative from GMP Consultants will be in Estes Park April 9 to gather input and build a candidate profile for the district’s next chief. That outreach will include interviews with volunteers, auxiliary members, paid staff, division chiefs, and community stakeholders.
A search committee consisting of two volunteers, two division chiefs, the interim fire chief, the administrative assistant, and two board members, Board President Sandi Smith and Vice President Scott Dorman, was appointed.
The search committee will shape the candidate profile, review the consultant’s advertising strategy, interview semifinalists via video, help design finalist interview panels, and narrow the field for the full board.
The district expects to advertise the position from mid-April to mid-May. Under the schedule approved Monday, the search committee will review applications and narrow the field by May 29 to three to five finalists. Finalists will be scheduled to come to Estes Park on June 17 and 18 for on-site interviews, district tours, and a community meet-and-greet.
It is anticipated that the board will make a hiring decision in late July or early August, with a target of having the new fire chief on board sometime in August or early September.
Board members expressed a desire to have the recruitment and hiring process be as open as possible to provide the community with transparency and accountability, with executive sessions used only when legally necessary.
Board keeps local residency requirement for new chief for now
The board also approved the fire chief job description, including one substantive update that allows candidates to qualify through “a combination of education and experience that sufficiently enables the candidate to perform all required functions of the fire chief position.”
“What we’re really looking for is a CEO. We’re not looking for necessarily a fireman’s fireman,” said board member Jeff Robbins after reviewing the details of the job description. “And this seems to satisfy that for me.”
While a residency requirement to live within the district’s response area could narrow the candidate pool, the board stopped short of relaxing this condition.
“I’m pretty strongly in the belief that they ought to live within our boundaries,” said Scott Dorman, a former fire chief in Estes and a current board member, during the discussion.
“I feel like the members of our community want them to be here and face us,” said Jon “Hippy” Smith.
The board agreed to keep the residency requirement in place and revisit it only if the applicant pool proves too limited.
Wildfire code adopted after line-by-line review
The board also unanimously approved adopting Resolution 2026-05, the Colorado Wildfire Resiliency Code, with modifications after a detailed review and a series of clarifying edits.
The new state code, adopted by the Wildfire Resiliency Code Board July 1, 2025, establishes minimum requirements for new construction and additions to buildings and residential structures.
Local jurisdictions with designated wildland-urban interface areas, such as Estes Park and the Estes Valley, are required to adopt the new Colorado Wildfire Resiliency Code by April 1, 2026, with mandatory enforcement by July 1, 2026.
The discussion centered less on whether to adopt the code than on making sure the language was clearly defined and enforceable. The modifications were aimed at improving clarity for property owners and aligning the rules with legislative intent.
Board members spent significant time walking through revisions to ensure consistency across multiple draft versions and to confirm that all prior comments from a recent work session had been incorporated.
Key changes included adding a formal definition of “parcel” based on county records, clarifying that property owners are responsible only for work within their own property boundaries, and refining language around maintenance standards to reflect code requirements in place at the time a structure was built.
Board members stressed that changes in the code language were needed to avoid creating an unrealistic or legally questionable burden on property owners seeking a permit to modify their property. Additionally, property owners cannot be required to do mitigation work on neighboring property.
The board walked through several other revisions before approving the code and emphasized the need to make it understandable to residents and applicants.
After several rounds of discussion and checks on the document draft versions, the board unanimously approved the final resolution.