Arlington Heights loses top fire rating

Arlington Heights residents are just as safe and will not pay higher insurance premiums, said Fire Chief Glenn Ericksen, but losing the top rating once given the department is disappointing.

The opinion about insurance premiums was seconded by the president of the Independent Insurance Agents of Illinois.

Instituting changes required to keep the prized Class 1 rating from a private organization called the Insurance Services Office Inc. would be so expensive that residents would be even more displeased, said Ericksen.

The village would have to add a fifth fire station and at least 24 firefighters, said Village Manager Bill Dixon, and that is unattainable in the current financial climate. However, he said the village is doing everything reasonable to raise its numerical score.

In 1997 the ISO gave the village a 1 rating. A note to that effect is still on the village's Web site. That's because the new 2 rating - which in the draft report fell almost to a 3 - has not been finalized, said Dixon. The organization studied the village in 2008 and issued the preliminary report a year ago in January 2009.

Homeowners and small businesses should see "absolutely no difference, zero, zero, zero," said Luke Praxmarer, president of the Independent Insurance Agents of Illinois.

And even the largest Arlington Heights buildings or concerns should see the tiniest premium increases or none at all, said Praxmarer, who is a partner in Corkill Insurance of Elk Grove Village.

In fact, he said his research shows that ISO ratings from 1 to 4 are very good. The ratings are one factor insurance companies use to set premiums.

State Farm Insurance, which calls itself the largest insurer of homes in the country, uses its own experience for underwriting and no longer uses ISO, said Missy Lundberg, a spokeswoman.

ISO officials were reluctant to answer specific questions. However, the company released a chart showing five communities in Illinois have Class 1 rankings and 56 have Class 2. The numbers climb steadily, with 642 departments at Class 6. In the draft report given the village, ISO says there are 10 classes, with Class 10 not meeting minimum requirements.

In a letter to the ISO that Ericksen provided the Daily Herald, the chief pointed out improvements made to the department between 1997 and 2008. These include getting firefighters to fires more quickly, hiring an additional 18 firefighters, replacing two older fire stations with new ones that have full backup emergency power, and replacing four older fire engines and an older ladder truck.

A response from Chuck Zydek, community mitigation manager for ISO, said development in Arlington Heights during the decade required the additional firefighters and equipment. Perhaps a mutual aid agreement for an additional ladder truck could improve the score at a lower price, said Zydek's letter.

It also acknowledged that the ISO uses distance rather than response times to evaluate where equipment and firefighters should be. Ericksen said ISO also has changed the way it measures distance, which hurts the Arlington Heights rating.

"We as a village want to get from point A to B as quickly as possible," he said.

Ericksen said the department's goal - which it exceeds - is to respond to building fires and ambulance calls in six minutes or less 90 percent of the time. And ISO has no interest in ambulance calls, he said.

Arlington Heights lost points because the Northwest Central Dispatch, which serves nine area communities plus a few other departments, does not have a system to automatically tell the dispatcher if there is a problem with the communication to a station. Instead the dispatcher alerts the station by radio and by cable-based backup. Instituting the automatic warning would be very expensive, but it will be discussed in the future with other partners in the communication system, said Dixon and Ericksen.

The village has automatic aid agreements with most neighboring communities, said Ericksen.

Arlington Heights has also had improvements in emergency communications and water service over the last decade, and both these systems are considered in the rating system, he said. Downtown redevelopment impacted the score, he said, noting those new, tall buildings have sprinkler systems.

"The village is trying to be practical and financially prudent. It's disappointing, but Class 2 is still an excellent rating," said Dixon.

Ericksen, though, called the rating a slap in the face.

"The 1 rating was a point of pride for the department and the community," he said. "We worked so hard over these last 10 years to improve the level of service we provide the community. This is a hard message to send back to them."