If all goes according to plan, residents inside of Lathrop’s city limits could end up paying less for insurance thanks to a number of advancements that the Lathrop Manteca Fire District has made over the last several years.

Currently those residing within Lathrop’s boundaries have an Insurance Service Organization classification of 3 after the independent agency conducted its last review of the service delivery of Lathrop Manteca Fire, its response times, the department itself, and the city’s ability to provide water in the event of a fire.

But in that review Lathrop Manteca had barely missed the score of 2 – which could translate into lower insurance rates for residents because it shows that the district is better suited to respond to things like structure fires when they are reported.

Since then, Lathrop Manteca has added a new fire station to serve River Islands which drastically cut down on the response time from the Mossdale Station to access the master planned community and added new apparatus and personnel as the city grew.

As a result, Lathrop Manteca Fire Chief Gene Neely is getting ready to request a review of the agency from the organization to see if they can garner an even better rating – potentially even heading towards a rating of 1.

“We want to provide the best level of service that we possibly can, and there is nothing higher than a Level 1 – only 19 percent of the United States can claim to be a Class 1 city, so we’d like to work towards being in that elite group,” Neely said. “Being a smaller department one of the things that can really impact you in the ratings is manpower, but we’ve been working to have stations built within appropriate timelines and have those stations staffed up and ready to go.

“We’re anticipating that we will move up.”

If Lathrop Manteca Fire succeeds, it will join the City of Manteca as a coveted “Class 2 City” for its fire department.

In the last 10 years the City of Lathrop has added at least 5,000 new residents, and with thousands of homes all waiting to be built in places like River Islands and Central Lathrop, that number is only going to continue to rise as the economy continues to grow – and Bay Area pricing continues to force people to look east for more affordable housing.

Neely said that he’s proud of the department’s ability to meet the demands that growth has brought, and said that it all starts with being at the table with developers when they want to come into the city to make sure that services like fire don’t lag behind as rooftops go in.

“We want all of our citizens – even the new citizens – to continue to receive the same level of response that they’re used to,” Neely said. “The rural areas are a little bit different because they have longer response times and things are more spread out and that’s a challenge we have to meet as an agency that covers both city and rural areas.

“But we have criteria to meet and we’re working to continue to meet that criteria to bring the best level of service possible to our residents.”

To contact reporter Jason Campbell email jcampbell@mantecabulletin.com or call 209.249.3544.