Maas earns top state emergency management honor

Dodge County’s top emergency management official has received a prestigious statewide honor.
Homeland Security and Emergency Management has named Matt Maas as the Emergency Management Professional of the Year. He received the award Feb. 15 at the HSEM Governor’s Conference in Brooklyn Center. 
Maas is the Public Safety Answering Point and emergency management director for Dodge County. His boss, Sheriff Scott Rose, Dodge County commissioner and Dodge Center fire chief Dave Kenworthy, and HSEM Region 1 program director Mike Peterson nominated Maas for the honor. 
“He is so very deserving of this award,” said Rose, who attended the awards ceremony along with other members of the sheriff’s administrative team. “I can think of nobody in our community more dedicated to helping improve the safety and security of the citizens of Dodge County.”
In making his recommendation to HSEM to pick Maas for the top award, Rose shared his experience of surrounding himself with a “go-to” staff when he became sheriff in 2015. 
“To my surprise, one of my most knowledgeable and trusted ‘go-to’ members of our office wasn’t someone sitting in administration, wasn’t a supervisor or wasn’t even wearing a badge. It was Matt Maas,” Rose wrote. 
After taking office, Rose sat down with Maas to learn more about emergency management. Rose said it took an hour for Maas to explain everything to him. 
“Matt’s knowledge about emergency management and safety, his enthusiasm for his position and for his role in helping keep our community safe was infectious to me,” Rose said. “I knew then that he would play an important role in the future of our county.”
Over the years, Maas has organized ECHO3 training on handling active shooter incidents in the school, followed by a large-scale active shooter training exercise in the courthouse. He also has improved courthouse security. Most recently he organized a church safety and security training for area faith leaders following a tragic church shooting in Texas. Nearly 100 faith leaders from 35 area churches attended the training. 
In addition to his duties with the county, Maas is a member of the Dodge Center Fire Department, where he serves as assistant chief.
“The level and degree of training and leadership our small county has experienced with our emergency management director reminds us often how blessed we are to have someone like Matt so dedicated to our county,” Rose said. “He is constantly looking toward the future on how to improve and continue to help make Dodge County a great place for our friends and family to raise their kids.”
Kenworthy called Maas a leader, educator and professional. 
“You will be hard pressed to find anyone with comparable dedication, skill, knowledge and commitment,” Kenworthy wrote about Maas in his recommendation letter.
Added Peterson, “Matt has positively impacted emergency preparedness in Dodge County and across southeast Minnesota. He has community leaders in Dodge County excited about preparedness and has been working hard to get others beyond Dodge County excited and engaged.”
HSEM, which is a division of the Minnesota Department of Public Safety, helps Minnesotans prevent, prepare for, respond to and recover from disasters and works to keep Minnesota secure from acts of terrorism.