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Marion hears ISO assessment: city holds ISO PPC class 3; officials outline steps to improve insurance rating
Summary
Marion City staff presented two insurance-related ISO assessments — building code effectiveness and public protection classification — showing Marion at commercial BCEGS class 3 and PPC (fire protection) class 3; staff outlined training, staffing, mutual aid and equipment steps to improve scores and potential timing for reassessment.
Marion City officials briefed the council on two Insurance Services Office (ISO) assessments that influence local insurance underwriting and municipal risk ratings, and outlined steps the city is taking to improve scores.
Gary (building official) summarized the Building Code Effectiveness Grading Schedule results, saying Marion’s commercial BCEGS is class 3 and residential BCEGS is class 4 (the state average is class 6). Gary said the building division tightened its point-interview process, revised inspection checklists and increased administrative training hours, all of which improved scores but “not enough to get us into that next classification.”
Chief Fagan reviewed Marion’s Public Protection Classification (PPC) for fire protection. He said ISO uses a weighted breakdown — emergency communications (10%), fire department (50%), water supply (40%) and up to 5 points for community risk reduction — and that Marion’s total credit placed it at a class 3 PPC. He described a ‘divergence’ penalty in ISO’s methodology that subtracted 7.35 points because of imbalances between water supply and deployable fire resources.
Officials identified areas to improve: better technical training and documentation of training, increased commercial inspection experience in the building department, improved data capture for mutual-aid response, and additional apparatus. Gary noted the city is budgeting for an additional aerial apparatus (an aerial ladder) and said staff were looking at staffing and training priorities. Chief Fagan highlighted the near-complete Public Safety Training Center and said better training records and the training facility should raise future scores.
Council members asked how quickly improvements could influence insurance premiums. Chief Fagan said ISO typically needs validated data (for example, 12 months of auto-aid performance) to assign credit; he suggested staff could request a special assessment once the required data exist, possibly within about a year. Staff cautioned that ISO evaluations are community-specific and that actuarial models in the insurance market will weight different perils (wind/hail vs. fire) differently.
The presentation did not include a formal action or vote; staff said they would continue implementing the remediation steps and would pursue reassessment when sufficient data are available.
