Live Oak City Council Examines Need for Fire Inspector

June 17--As Live Oak studies efforts to reduce its Insurance Services Office (ISO) fire safety rating, the City Council wants to know how to increase the number of business fire inspections performed annually.

Both topics came up during the June 10 council meeting during a presentation by Fire Chief Charles Foster, who approached council about inserting the hiring of an ISO consultant into the new budget.

But questions after his report raised some eyebrows.

Councilman Ed Cimics wondered of it would be better for the city to hire a fire inspector instead, saying Live Oak has performed fire inspections on just 90 of its near-500 businesses in the past two years.

"We get to as many businesses as we can with the manpower that we have," Foster reiterated Monday in a meeting with City Manager Matt Smith. "We're able to do about 90 inspections a year (with current staffing)."

Foster reported to council that the city currently holds a "3" ISO rating, which impacts the insurance rates and sucharges primarily for businesses in a community.

Foster pitched hiring an ISO consultant, similar to the consultant that Selma and Converse hired who helped them improve their city ratings from a 3 to a 2 ISO mark.

A formula used by the ISO to rank cities involves fire alarms and responses, the status of the fire department and a city's water supply. Review of the fire department constitutes 50 percent of the ISO review score.

"The main way to impact an ISO rating is through personnel, through the (fire) department itself," Foster said.

Live Oak currently runs six firefighters per shift, and those personnel trained to do inspections have to be pulled from their shift to perform inspections, the chief said.

Cimics questioned how Foster could expect the city to hire an ISO consultant at $30,000 when it has more than 400 of its businesses without inspections in the past two years.

To average 11 fire inspections a week, as laid out in ISO guidelines, would require the hiring of an additional person who would do nothing but inspections, Smith and Foster asserted. Not only would the addition of a fire inspector allow the city to perform the overdue inspections, but it would add to the department's rolls, and help with its efforts to bolster the ISO rating.

"But council(members) made it pretty clear, they remain cautious about spending that type of money," Smith said, referring to the ISO consultant or a fire department staffer whose primary focus would be inspections, not responding to fire alarms.

"We have to explore our options," Foster said, adding, "to find out where Live Oak is going to get the biggest bang for its bucks."

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