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The department will begin a 13-week recruit firefighter training academy in January with a <br />projected completion date scheduled in April. This measure's benchmark of completion will <br />be met when a sufficient number of the recruits have successfully completed the recruit <br />training, graduated the academy, and are given their line assignments. The overall department <br />staffing needed to provide a crew for the Valley River Engine #9 will be met in the interim <br />using overtime personnel. <br />The department, in conjunction with Fleet Services, will retain an additional fire apparatus <br />that is scheduled to be replaced in FY06. By retaining this piece of equipment targeted for <br />surplus, the department will gain the necessary resources to place a fire engine at the Valley <br />River Fire Station in January. This measure's benchmark of completion will be achieved <br />when the apparatus is formally equipped and deployed to the Valley River Station in early <br />January 2006. <br />The new engine's primary response area, with the addition of Santa Clara Engine #11, has <br />already been established and is built into the computer-aided dispatch (CAD) program <br />within Central Lane 9-1-1. <br />FINAL OUTCOME MEASURES <br />Overall service effectiveness in a given geographical area is in part measured through response <br />reliability. Response reliability is the probability that the first response resources assigned to a <br />territory will be available to respond from within that territory when an emergency occurs in that <br />area. Response reliability would be 100% if every fire crew was available in its station every time an <br />emergency call for service was received. In reality, because of the large demand for service in the <br />city, there are times that a call is received when the first-due company is out of their area or <br />committed to another response. This situation requires that a secondary coverage company, in the <br />pre-determined response order, be assigned. If this later-due company is too far away, the call <br />cannot be handled within the desired travel time goal. <br />Prior to the redeployment of the Valley River Fire Engine to Santa Clara, the Valley River areas <br />response reliability was at 93.90% (7-01 to 6-02). After redeployment, with only an ambulance <br />stationed at the Valley River Station, response reliability dropped to 54.53% (7-03 to 6-04). At the <br />same time, the response reliability for the Sheldon Station and Downtown Station, both of which <br />absorbed some of this call volume dropped from 86.42% to 84.29% and 94.36% to 88.78% <br />respectively for these same time periods. <br />The overall effectiveness of re-staffing the Valley River engine will be evaluated using three adopted <br />standard of response coverage measures: <br />• The department's overall "response time" at the 80~' percentile; <br />• The department's overall "response reliability," which measures the percentage of time the <br />first due response resource is available to respond to an emergency occurring in its assigned <br />response area; and <br />• The department's response reliability in the Valley River area. <br />Demonstrable improvement in these three measures and the associated services delivered to the <br />public should be quickly realized upon the re-staffing of Engine 9. <br />-12- <br />