Belgrade council unanimously adopts updated fire code, names city manager as fire official

Belgrade — The City Council voted unanimously on November 3 to adopt Ordinance 2025-511, which repeals and replaces Title 6 of the municipal code, adopts the International Fire Code and designates the city manager as the city’s fire official.

The ordinance was introduced by Councilmember Simon and seconded by Councilmember Matamo; the council opened a public hearing before taking the final vote. Two members of the public spoke: Jay Whitwer, who identified himself as both a Belgrade resident and the fire chief for Central Valley Fire District, and Stephen McGowan, a nearby resident. Whitwer urged continued partnership between the district and the city and said he was “disappointed with this action” while offering an “olive branch” to work together. McGowan said Central Valley Fire “already has those services available” and questioned whether taxpayers would be paying twice for similar positions.

City staff and a presenter identified as Kyla told the council there were no changes to the city’s fireworks rules and that the update is primarily a technical and organizational modernization. “This is just updating the code with respect to the fire marshal position and adopting the international fire code, establishing the city manager as our administrative official, the city fire official for that fire code and updating the associated code sections that applied to that,” Kyla said during the hearing.

City Manager Cardwell responded directly to public concerns, saying the state of Montana requires the city to be the fire code authority within municipal boundaries and that the city is not permitted to contract that responsibility out. “The state of Montana has mandated that the city must be the fire code authority within our municipal boundaries and we are not allowed to contract that out,” he said, adding that the change “is really ratifying what state law requires us to do” and that the update does not create additional positions at this time.

After discussion, the council moved to adopt the ordinance. The motion passed unanimously. Meeting minutes record the action as final adoption of Ordinance 2025-511; the council did not record individual roll-call votes in the transcript beyond the standard “aye” responses and a blanket notation that the motion passed unanimously.

The ordinance updates the city’s fire-code language (the previous local code predates the 1983 model cited by staff) and formalizes administrative responsibility with the city manager. Staff said the update had been published as required before the hearing and that no other public comments had been received in advance.