View the Strategic Plan

View or download the Santa Rosa Fire Department's 5-Year Strategic Plan (PDF).

Introd​uction

The Santa Rosa Fire Department (SRFD) was established as a full-time fire department in January 1894. The SRFD also serves as the Roseland Fire Protection District Fire Department through contract, along with automatic aid agreements with the County of Sonoma, and Rincon Valley, Kenwood and Bennett Valley Fire Protection Districts. The SRFD has a staff of 146 employees serving a community population of over 181,000 residents. There are ten fire stations strategically located around the city. The SRFD responds to more than 26,000 calls for service per year specific to fire, emergency medical, rescue, and hazardous materials incidents. The department provides fire suppression, rescue, first response emergency medical services, operations-level hazardous materials response, fire prevention, and life-safety services from all ten fire stations covering 42 square miles within the service area. As of December 2016 the SRFD has been upgraded from a Class 3 rating to a Class 1 rating by the ISO (Insurance Service Office). The ISO evaluates over 40,000 Fire Departments Nationwide, with only 178 earning the Class 1 Rating as of 2016.

Selfless, engaged and committed are a few of the words that describe members of the Santa Rosa Fire Department. A cross section of personnel from all ranks volunteered to be involved in writing our current Strategic Five Year Plan for the Department. Through a series of meetings, this team has produced a plan that will cover the next five years for our organization. The mission, vision and value statements for the Fire Department was updated and served as important reference point in the formulation of this plan. I would like to thank these members for the time, effort and expertise they contributed to the writing of this plan.

We recognize that this plan is a living document and will require revision and change. The plan will be evaluated, revised and refined every year resulting in a current plan always being in place. It is intended that this plan be utilized in the preparation of the annual Fire Department budget; as a method of informing Council of the department's goals and objectives; and as a conduit for decision making.

Serving a growing community with ever-increasing demands for fire and life safety services has been increasingly difficult. In just the last 15 years we have seen an increase of over 30% in emergency responses. Measure "O" sales tax helps us to keep pace with the increasing demands for emergency service delivery. We will still face challenges in fire prevention, community outreach, aging infrastructure, recruitment, and training. The expansion of the Department will bring forth new opportunities to continue excellent service to our community as well as new challenges.

Our Department must be able to respond to change, solve problems, collaborate on issues, assess community needs, identify the resources required to meet those needs and formulate the plans necessary to provide comprehensive and cost effective services to our customers, the citizens and visitors of Santa Rosa.

Fire Chief

About The Strategic Plan

Our plan contains Strategic initiatives that fulfill the mission of the organization and provide individual members with clear direction. Strategic goals and objectives are management tools that need to be updated on an ongoing basis to identify accomplishments and to note changes within the organization and the community. 

Strategic goals and objectives, as well as performance measures, become the focus of the organization’s efforts. By following these initiatives and objectives carefully, the organization will be guided into the future and should benefit from reduced obstacles and distractions. 

Using the array of internal and external input collected during the retreat process, the SRFD Strategic Planning Team combined the information gained with its collective knowledge of the organization and the internal and external factors that influence the outcome of the organization’s services. 

The team developed a specific set of strategic initiatives that will serve as the focus for the organization’s strategic plan. Each initiative was followed by subordinate goals and objectives aimed at developing a prioritized work plan for the next three to five years. The initiatives are as follows:

1.         Service Delivery
2.         Training
3.         Finance
4.         Community Engagement
5.         Administration and Support Services
6.         EMS
7.         Fire Prevention and Certified Unified Program Agency (CUPA)