Willow Park is one step closer to implementing a Hazard Mitigation Plan and Fire Chief Mike LeNoir presented information about the benefits of having the program at Tuesday night’s city council meeting. Hazard mitigation is the effort to reduce loss of life and property by lessing the impact of disasters, according to the FEMA website. A FEMA-approved plan is a condition for receiving certain types of non-emergency disaster assistance, including funding for mitigation projects. “We kicked this off in November 2018 and it’s continued all the way up to our mitigation workshop [this month]. We’re going to review and adopt the plan as soon as we can and we will be presenting it back to [the city council] and getting it approved,” LeNoir said. “I tried to get this setup for the storm sirens — that’s what started the entire program. We didn’t have the Hazard Mitigation Plan in place, so I wasn’t able to get funding for that. So this gets the ball rolling on getting this plan.”