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This week the Fire Department is observing Home Fire Sprinkler Week. The Fire Department’s fire safety house will be

05/21/2019

This week the Fire Department is observing Home Fire Sprinkler Week. The Fire Department’s fire safety house will be open tomorrow (May 21st) from 9 a.m. to noon to provide home fire safety education. The Department received $500 from the Home Fire Sprinkler Coalition to increase home fire sprinkler education locally. According to the HFSC, the risk of dying in a home fire decreases by about 85 percent if sprinklers are present.

Fargo Cass Public Health has installed two outdoor sharps kiosks for safe and secure disposal of syringes, needles, lancets, auto injectors and infusion and connection sets. The large blue kiosks look and function much like a mail drop box. The kiosks are available for public use, are accessible any time and are located at the Harm Reduction Center at 510 5th Street North and at the main Public Health building on 25th Street South. If you have any needles you want to get rid of please hand them in.

The North Dakota Department of Human Services’ Behavioral Health Division has awarded funds to Fargo Cass Public Health to continue local efforts dedicated to decreasing access to unwanted prescription opioids and to increasing access to Naloxone as well as recovery support services. The funding will support local efforts this year through September 30th with the potential for continued funding through September 2020. Since we’ve begun working on prescription drug abuse problems in The City of Fargo and the Cass County area, we’ve decreased prescriptions by 40 percent among our healthcare providers. That’s a tremendous impact on the number of narcotics out there for people to get in trouble with.

May is Building Safety Month and the safety of buildings and properties is what the Inspections Department works on every day. Building safety professionals play a major role in keeping the public safe. They ensure that homes, businesses and places of public assembly are built to required building safety codes, which address structural stability, fire safety, exits, sanitation, electricity, energy efficiency and more. We have found some unsafe houses in the community, and we are working on getting those up to code.

The Library’s annual Summer Reading Program starts June 3rd. “A Universe of Stories” is the theme of this year’s program, which runs through August 10th.

The Fargo Human Relations Commission has joined the Community Workforce Inclusion Council to find ways to further equity in the workforce and other sectors in the Fargo metro area.

The Arts and Culture Commission is seeking input from the public about installation of public art. To take the survey and learn more about the Arts and Culture Commission, visit the City of Fargo website. We’re curious where you’d like to see some public art in the community.

Eight new police officers were sworn in last week during a ceremony in the City Commission Chambers. Chief Todd reports that proud family members were very impressed and thankful for all the preparation to make the ceremony memorable for them and the new officers.

The Law Enforcement Memorial Service was held last week at Lindenwood Park. It takes a lot of hard work and commitment by many people to arrange the service and get everything set up and they do a fantastic job. Chief Todd was one of the main speakers. It’s hard to believe that in the nation we had 163 deaths of police officers in the line of duty, which is a tragedy in itself, but it was a very nice memorial service and it was well attended.

Brock Morrison has joined the City as Director of Facilities Management. Brock is responsible for overseeing the maintenance of all City-owned buildings and property. He comes to Fargo from International Falls, Minnesota. Welcome to Team Fargo, Brock.

And finally, we are going to show a couple of short videos produced by the Communications Department’s Creative Services Division – one from the Forestry Department regarding tree planting and another from the Solid Waste Department’s plastic bag recycling challenge.

In the future, we will show more videos at Commission meetings to highlight all of the departments and educate the public in what we do. It is impressive, from the progressive work at the landfills to the work of the engineers in the summer.