Mr. Chirman and Board members,

As the Fire Chief and Fire Code official for the City of Danville, I appreciate the opportunity to comment and make recommendations to the Board of Housing and Community Development.  As I think we can all agree, a lot of work by DHCD staff, has gone in to removing the "unenforceable" sections of the SFPC. The major rub however is that the language in the Code of Virginia directing a joint process with the Virginia Fire Service Board was largely ignored. As has been the norm in the past, a consenses based review was not conducted until very late in the process.  This did not allow members of the Fire Service, who generally enforce the SFPC, the opportunity to participate in the change process.  I respectfully request to add my name in support of the proposal made by the Virginia Fire Chiefs Association and that is to strongly recommend only adopting to the SFPC the seventeen proposed code changes (found in book 5 - part 1 -tabs 1&3) as printed in the Virginia Register in February 2017 and approved by the Board in October.  I agree, that this limited adoption of proposed changes will resolvethe controversial and problematic full document SFPC re-write that the DHCD subsequently passed by a small margin.    Furthermore, as this recommendation does not effect any of the changes to the other codes there appears to be no down side to only approving those sections that were fully vetted by all stakeholders. 

Regards,

David Eagle