Newton County receives improved ISO rating

NEWTON COUNTY, GA - Newton County residents will see a reduction in their homeowners' insurance when its newly improved Insurance Services Office (ISO) rating goes into effect on Oct. 1.

Newton County's most recent ISO rating is 3/3x, an improvement from its 4/4x rating, done in 2018.

ISO collects information about municipal fire suppression efforts, analyzes the relevant data and tallies those efforts into a score from 1 to 10. The lower the score being the better the rating.

"This is absolutely fantastic," County Manager Harold Cooper said. "This new rating shows Newton County's unwavering commitment to public safety. The improved score quantifies the tremendous accomplishments of water resources, the water authority, the E-911 center and our own Newton County Fire Services and equates to tangible financial relief to our homeowners."

A community's ISO rating is scored on four criteria: Fire Department (which makes up 50 percent of the score), the water supply, community risk reduction and E-911.

The ISO auditors evaluated tremendous improvement in the County's water supply and found several areas where Fire Services have made great strides, leading to the new score.

Since 2018, Newton County's Fire Services built two new fire stations and renovated a volunteer station into a full-time station, added 62 firefighters and purchased three engines, an air light truck and a tender.

The investments by County staff and support from the Board of Commissioners paid dividends with more coming in the near future.

Newton County is currently training a class of recruits, while hiring for another. The department has also purchased an additional four engines, one platform truck and two tenders, making a continued improvement in future ISO ratings possible.

"We are still striving to get to a rating of 1," said Newton County Fire Chief Royce Turner. "We have new deployment strategies with an increase in staffing and additional equipment that will support us moving forward and will also help our ISO rating for the next rating period."

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For more information about Newton County, please visit www.ncboc.com, like Newton County, Ga on Facebook, watch on YouTube.com/NewtonCountyGovernment or follow on Twitter at @NewtonCounty or Instagram @NewtonCountygov.

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