Chief Brady reviews ISO criteria and case studies showing quicker response times and lower property loss

Chief Brady, identified in the meeting as the presenting fire chief, told the Cache County Fire District advisory committee that the Insurance Services Office (ISO) public-protection classification (PPC) assesses communities across four main categories: dispatch, fire-department resources and training, water supply and community risk reduction. “They’re the ones that kinda set the criteria which most of the insurance companies across the country use to start to determine risk and rate when it comes to fire protection,” Chief Brady said.

Brady described the PPC as a 10-to-1 scale that evaluates 911/dispatch reliability, apparatus and personnel distribution, pump capacity, turnout and response times, target‑hazard planning and training records. He emphasized that community risk reduction work is treated as “extra credit”: “It’s kinda like extra credit in school,” Brady said, meaning programs can add points but won’t lower a baseline score that is already assigned.

Using case studies, Brady said communities that improved their ISO class saw measurable operational gains. He summarized an Ohio example in which a community’s class improved and officials later recorded faster response times, more property saved and similar or lower civilian injuries in the period covered by the study. Brady framed those changes as the result of redistributing resources, adding staff and improving water-supply capacity rather than a single technical fix.

Committee members asked whether better ISO scores produce lower homeowner insurance premiums. Brady cautioned that insurers use the PPC differently and that local rate changes are hard to generalize. “I could give you a hypothetical answer,” he said; “in Utah, the data I’ve been able to see is 3 to 5 percent,” while other out‑of‑state examples showed larger swings. He also said robust local insurer claim data would be needed to quantify local savings.

Members asked for localized comparisons by jurisdiction and for an approximation of annual fire-related losses in the valley. Brady agreed to provide incident-location data and estimated losses drawn from department records but said precise dollar losses tied to insurer claims would require cooperation from insurance providers.

The committee’s next steps on this topic are concrete: Brady will supply incident and estimated-loss data for the committee to review, and members asked staff to assemble jurisdictional comparisons (cities vs. unincorporated areas) to better evaluate potential benefits from PPC improvements.

The meeting moved from technical ISO explanation into budget and governance topics after this presentation; no formal decisions or votes were taken on ISO evaluation or resource allocation during the session.