Property insurance rates could be impacted by Atlanta Public Safety Training Center

ATLANTA, Ga. (Atlanta News First) - Atlanta firefighters are pushing for the new Public Safety Training Center. They say without proper training facilities their insurance rate could be in jeopardy, which impacts all homeowners and property owners in Atlanta.

Nate Bailey is the President of the Atlanta Professional Fire Fighters Association. He says the department has gone years without a city-owned training facility and they have spent a lot of money renting various classrooms, parking garages, and burn facilities to educate new recruits.

Bailey says the new Public Safety Training Center would roll classroom and hands-on training all into one, and help the fire department maintain a low ISO rating.

“The better your fire department, the lower your rating. Currently, we have a 1, which is the best. But if we can’t maintain our staffing and training, we could possibly lose that and that would have a huge negative impact on our homeowners and our business owners,” Bailey said.

Bailey says if the rating slips, every home and business owner in Atlanta could see their property insurance rates increase by hundreds of dollars. He says that happened in Detroit back in 2015.

“Some of the property bills went from a thousand to 17 hundred dollars a year and we don’t want to put an extra 700 dollars a year burden on our citizens,” Bailey said.

Over the last year, many people have expressed opposition to the new public safety training center, claiming it will militarize police. Though Atlanta Police Chief Darin Schierbaum has called those claims “baseless.”

Bailey says he only sees the new training center as a win for public safety.

“We want this best fire department. We want the best protection, so we have to have the best training,” Bailey said.

Atlanta City Council will decide Monday if they will greenlight 31 million dollars to be put towards developing the new public safety training center.

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