REPORT TO COUNCIL
SUBJECT
Title
Overview of the Consultant's Report for the Department of Public Safety: Comprehensive Community Risk Assessment, Standards of Cover Study, and Station Location and Deployment Study (Information Only)
Report
BACKGROUND
The Department of Public Safety (DPS) has operated its Bureau of Fire Services since the 1960's with the same number of fire stations, essentially the same types and numbers of fire apparatus, and the same staffing configuration with minor changes. During that same time frame, the nature of the Department's risk and the population of the City have changed. Since the year 2000, previous evaluations of the Department's operations have included a study by Matrix Consulting Group, Optimum Staffing Study for the Department of Public Safety, December 2005 and Fitch and Associates, EMS System Design Report, May 2001. While both reports provided a review of fire service delivery, neither provided an in-depth fire services industry-standard review like this effort.
To evaluate our community risk, the geographical location of our resources, the deployment of those resources, the condition of our fire stations and to benchmark our organization against the best practices of the fire service industry, the City engaged a consultant to conduct a Comprehensive Community Risk Assessment, Standards of Cover Study, and Station Location and Deployment Study. Through the City's procurement process, Citygate Associates, LLC was selected to conduct this study. This type of report is based on industry best practice standards, recommendations and guidelines from the Commission on Fire Accreditation International (CFAI), the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) and the Insurance Services Office (ISO).
A Community Risk Assessment is a process to identify and prioritize local risks. A Standards of Cover is defined by CFAI as the process (known as "deployment analysis") of written procedures which determine the distribution and conce...
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