To prepare for this assignment, you will need to review the case study on page 255 of your textbook. Analyze the information from the case study, and be sure to address the following information in your response to the case study:
Describe the advantages to using paid and volunteer staff for life safety and fire prevention programs and the problems that might occur between newly hired staff in Christmas Valley and the neighboring jurisdiction, where code compliance inspections were previously done by emergency responders.
What qualifications might be necessary for these staff members and how would you go about finding out about state or national training requirements or certifications?
How would you go about developing a training program for life safety and fire prevention staff? Whose support would be necessary, and how would it be funded?
Your case study should be at least two pages in length and in APA style. A minimum of two references are required.
IICase Study
Porth Bureau of Fire, Rescue, and Emergency Services The City of Porth has a population of about-500,000 and serves an area of about 150 square miles. The fire department has 27 fire stations and about 750 sworn and nonsworn employees, and it provides a lull range of emergency and pre-vention services. The Prevention Division has about "0 employees devoted to public education, tire investigation, code enforcement, and plan re-view activities. Over time, the efforts of individ-ual programs have been evaluated in a variety of %VJVs. 'Workload indicators are tracked for the city auditor, who produces a regular report on the activities of the fire department. The annual report on service efforts and accomplishments N shared through the International City Managers Association and the Government Accounting Stan-dards Board.
Efficiency measures have been tracked general terms and used in a benchmarking InProc with other jurisdictions. Effectiveness measures gtss have been tracked closely and documeneore specific programs such as public education earn, paigns. Overall, the measures demonstrating . • rink and loss reduction have dominated the disenssi_ about the relative value of prevention programs in Perth. Recently, a new program of charging fees for fire code enforcement inspections was institute: As part of that program, a 5-year evaluation ' Hod was established to demonstrate the imps; of the program. The measures for the meat: include risk reduction and loss reduction mess. ures. but they also include more specifically tar. geted measures for the occupancies subject to the code enforcement activities. Several examples of the data analysis are shown in the accompanying figure.
Case Study Review Questions
I. Given the information presented, what measures portray risk reduction and loss reduction in the Porth case study?
2. What inferences can he made from the comparison between Porth and other compa-rable jurisdictions in the Service Effort and Accomplishment (SEA) report? What dangers are there to these comparisons?
3. What conclusions can he drawn from the comparison of Porth's fire loss statistics to state and national trends over the same period of time?
4. What indicator in the Porth case study reflects workload? What factors might affect the workload indicators to produce these results?
5. Where arc examples of anecdotal instances in the case study? How much of an impact (presumably) would these indicators have on the decision makers responsible for continued funding of the fee for inspection program?
6. How is evaluation linked to planning?
7. How may we describe results of fire prevention programs?
8. What is the value of benchmarking?
9. What is the difference between performance measurement and evaluation measures?
10. How does the term results overlap both performance and evaluation measures?