Guns, hoses, fitness and fun!

What’s up with this Guns and Hoses Gala?

The people who are assigned to the front line of public safety in any community are unlike any others. As police officers and fire fighters, they are routinely expected to be ready at a moments notice to undertake seemingly super-human feats. Many of these involve degrees of physical exertion. As such, it is essential that police officers and fire fighters are physically ready to undertake such endeavors. This is accomplished a number of ways, depending upon each individual public safety employee and their specific or collateral duty assignments. Many work out at local gyms to maintain a basic level of fitness, others engage in periodic specialized training, and most engage in some sort of physically based training in conjunction with their regular duty shifts. Police officers, for example, must perpetually be ready to take a resisting suspect into custody, so they will routinely practice arrest control techniques during their briefings or more advanced techniques after their briefings.

While many of Chico’s Fire facilities have small designated areas where some on-duty physical training can be conducted, Fire personnel often travel to the Fire Training Center at the City Campus on Humboldt Road to engage in other aspects of their training. The staff at Police, on the other hand, do not have any designated space in the cramped Police facility at all. Rather, they periodically utilize a warehouse bay at the City Campus, where they temporarily roll out exercise mats to conduct arrest control techniques training. It has long been recognized that there would be benefit to having permanent designated space where both Police and Fire could have 24 hour access to conduct specialized and routine physical training related to their assignments as employees are available to do so.

About a year ago, the stars aligned for a period of time, and Captain Lori MacPhail and I were able to obtain permission to use vacant garage space in a city-owned building at 1500 Humboldt Road as a workout/exercise room for police personnel. We quickly realized this presented a great opportunity to reinforce the bond between Police and Fire, so we connected with the chief officers at the Fire Department. They too liked the idea. We hit up our respective unions, and there was initial support from both, but we quickly realized that bringing a project of that scope to fruition would be a challenge.

Over the last several months, I have watched with awe and immense appreciation as the most incredible community group of supporters of public safety have come together to help the Chico Police and Fire departments overcome the challenge and realize a dream. As chance would have it, Captain MacPhail and I spoke to some key community partners in the grass roots Chico Police Department Business Support Team, and there was immediate excitement about joining with us to bring the idea of a Chico Public Safety Fitness and Training Center to fruition.

Led by Rory Rotthchalk of Culp and Tanner, a dream team that included Culp and Tanner’s Scott McFarren as Project Coordinator, architect Gary Hawkins, contractor Howard Slater, Project Superintendent Jim Barham of Slater and Son Construction, Chico High ROP instructor Mike Brugmann and students Wendy Solis and Jacob Winslow, Don Fowler of McClelland Air Conditioning and the Chico Sunrise Rotary Club, in addition to the Chico Police Department Business Support Team and many more, has assembled and developed and committed to a plan that will make the dream a reality. While much has been, and will continue to be, accomplished with donated time and materials, there will be some hard costs associated with building the Training Facility. It is out of the need to cover the hard costs of the project that the idea was born for the Guns and Hoses Gala.

Scheduled for Friday evening, April 23rd, at the Sierra Nevada Big Room, the Guns and Hoses Gala will include dinner, a silent auction, a live auction by the ever popular and down-to-earth Rob Ramay, DJ music (with dancing!) from the legendary Greg Scott, and a whole bunch of fun. 100% percent of the proceeds of this event will support the Chico Public Safety Fitness and Training Center Project. Funds raised will be routed through the Chico Police Department Foundation, which is held by the North Valley Community Foundation.

As a leader in public safety in this community, I am incredibly excited about what this project represents. First, it is a grass roots level project based on public safety, government, the private sector and private citizens working together toward a goal that will ultimately benefit the safety of the entire community. Second, once complete, this training center will support the needs of public safety for many years to come. Even with plans to enhance and expand Police and Fire facilities in the future, the existence of this venue on the City Campus and in close proximity to the Fire Training Center, a focal point for public safety training throughout the region, will virtually assure its use and value in perpetuity.

I can’t offer enough thanks to all who are involved in making this happen....THANK YOU!!