Woodstock fire chief outlines two new stations, recruit class and dashboard; proposes new operations chief role

Chief Shane Dobson updated the Woodstock mayor and council on capital, staffing and organizational changes intended to keep pace with city growth and service demand.

Dobson said Fire Station 28 (Ridgewalk, west of I-575 near the outlet mall) is progressing rapidly (slab poured and interior walls up) with an anticipated August opening; Station 34 had recently broken ground and is expected to open in December or January. He said the new apparatus for Station 28 is in final outfitting at the dealer and the truck planned for Station 34 will be a refurbished city unit due in mid-year.

On staffing, Dobson said the department launched its first joint recruit class with Cherokee County, with 12 recruits who have completed Firefighter I and II and are pursuing EMT certification, and that they are on track to graduate toward July.

Dobson described a new Power BI dashboard that backloads five years of data (~35,000 calls) and yields analytics by station, shift, call type and location; the tool helps identify training needs, high-frequency locations and apparatus workloads. "It gives us an opportunity to be much more pinpoint on what we are doing," he said.

To support growth and stricter documentation required for accreditation, Dobson proposed restructuring the command model from two divisions to three (adding an operations division) and requested that the budget process add a division chief (through internal promotion) and a fire inspector. He described accreditation through the Commission on Fire Accreditation International as a comprehensive, multi-year process that would strengthen policies and continuous improvement.

Councilmembers praised the dashboard and asked staff to model historical call demand applied to the new station locations to predict deployment changes and to provide more precise staffing and time estimates for accreditation work. Dobson said accreditation would require at least one full-time lead and team support and that he would provide additional timeline and staffing details.