By Connor Currier
The Madrid Volunteer Fire District hosted a ribbon-cutting ceremony for the newly renovated fire station Tuesday.
The new station features a multi-dimensional facility that will be able to host town meetings, election hearings and a complex for first responders. Fire Chief Carl Hansen of the Madrid Volunteer Fire District says, “It’s a real big deal. We finally have a meeting room that’s large enough to accommodate all the town organizations so they can comfortably hold their meetings.
“In the past, the fire department would always have to pull trucks out of the garage base for meetings, depending on what size meetings they work. And once again, all our two or three trucks would have to be moved out of the fire department to accommodate the elections,” said Hansen on the benefits of this project. ‘So now the elections are likely to happen in the meeting room. So that’s another nice thing, so it doesn’t disrupt our fire operations by having a lot of election equipment packed in around our fire trucks.”
“The expansion is enabling us to better support our community service efforts, both through the fire department and by making more space available to local organizations”, said the Madrid Volunteer Fire District.
“Santa Fe County funded the expansion. That’s where the money came from. The food program is part of our building and is a community room, so all the town meetings go on there,” said Chief Hansen on the financial support for this project.
The community also emphasized this renovation will help the efforts of making more space available to local organizations like the Madrid Food Program.
Other organizations use it like the Food Distribution Program, which largely gets its food supply from Santa Fe Kitchen,” Hanson said.
