City of Compton Strategic Plan

Engineering Our Future

Strategic Plan Overview - May 2025

Goal 1: Preventing Injury and Illness

Care for each member of the workforce and ensure that they go home safe and healthy at the end of their shift by proactively preventing work-related injuries, accidents and illnesses.

Strategy Statements

  • Provide quality care to our workforce when they have become ill or been injured and facilitate their return as a healthy and productive member of our organization.
  • Identify the causal factors resulting in workplace illness and injury.
  • Develop injury and illness prevention programs and practices based on causal factors.
  • Implement injury and illness prevention and protection programs and practices.
  • Develop tools to measure the effectiveness of injury and illness prevention programs.

Goal 2: Delivering Exemplary Emergency Services

Deliver caring, customer-focused emergency services to the public and identify organization-wide opportunities to better support the emergency responders who deliver them.

Strategy Statements

  • Develop and implement programs resulting in employee understanding that the future success of our city is based on exemplary customer service.
  • Consistently analyze, evaluate and improve community care.
  • Develop strategies "above and beyond" the norm to promote and improve the services we provide, resulting in our city becoming a leading community.
  • Capture "best practices" and "lessons learned" to foster positive change in our organizational culture.
  • Celebrate and recognize employees who deliver outstanding customer service.
  • Develop and implement processes to measure and evaluate our effectiveness in providing exemplary, caring services to our residents.
  • Develop technical training programs that prepare, plan and maintain employee competencies when delivering customer service.

Goal 3: Innovating New Delivery Systems

Develop innovative strategies to deliver exceptional and competitive public safety services and products.

Strategy Statements

  • Analyze emerging demographics and research public safety service trends to identify opportunities for competitive service and product innovations.
  • Identify and develop the products and services our residents will want and need in the next 5-10 years.
  • Develop tools to measure the effectiveness of new programs.
  • Identify, develop and promote our city's competitive advantage through cost effectiveness, quality and customer service.
  • Develop efficient, cost-effective, data-driven methods, models, and strategies for deploying and responding to public safety services.
  • Engineer innovative programs that uphold our city as our community's best option for creative public safety services.

Goal 4: Fostering Workforce Excellence

Create and foster an organizational culture of mutual trust and teamwork that results in a high performing and diverse workforce where personal strengths are recognized and individual differences are respected.

Strategy Statements

  • Create and foster trust in each other by implementing excellent, transparent, two-way communication and fairness in developing and applying policy and procedures.
  • Develop and promote programs that exemplify the key characteristics of an effective team, which includes caring, mutual respect, transparent communication, pride, mentoring others, rewarding good performance and collective responsibility.
  • Increase our Departments' diverse pool of excellent candidates reflecting the communities we serve.
  • Incorporate ongoing diversity education to all personnel to increase employee awareness of the benefits of a diverse workforce.
  • Appreciate and recognize the cultural strengths of our workforce to collectively improve team dynamics and trust in our diverse environment.
  • Enhance sensitivity to differences through Department-wide initiatives.

Goal 5: Financial Stability & Accountability

Establish revenue and expenditure strategies and accountability processes, as good stewards of public resources, in order to meet current and future financial obligations.

Strategy Statements

  • Develop a financial strategic plan that integrates innovative delivery strategies, future service expansion and infrastructure replacement needs.
  • Strengthen existing revenue streams and develop innovative strategies for new revenue.
  • Enhance fiscal accountability by developing and implementing effective training tools and fiscal management systems.
  • Develop programs with input from all Department members that emphasize the importance of fiscal responsibility to ensure cost-effective service delivery.

Goal 6: Developing the Leader in Each Employee

Maintain a responsible and effective workforce that provides accountability at all levels of the organization.

Strategy Statements

  • Achieve a high performing workforce by developing a performance management system that includes position-based expectations which are linked to performance rating standards.
  • Develop and implement a Professional Development Institute that provides a scope and sequence of training and competencies for each level within the organization.
  • Develop and promote employee performance programs that exemplify the key characteristics of an effective leader.
  • Develop competency-based training with a focus on emphasizing the critical importance of individual accountability and skills for mastering each employee's craft.
  • Enhance the Appraisal of Promotability process for capturing proper knowledge, skills and abilities required to perform at the higher level.

Goal 7: Strengthening Our Infrastructure

Strengthen the fundamental facilities and systems serving the Department to meet evolving service delivery demands.

Strategy Statements

  • Refine and improve procurement processes to support our services in a timely and effective manner.
  • Improve Department work sites by making appropriate adjustments to areas regarding privacy and access.
  • Develop, implement and maintain technological infrastructure.
  • Develop and maintain an effective and efficient construction and maintenance workforce.
  • Using innovative strategies, assess, evaluate and maintain Department facilities to provide a safe, efficient, functional and compliant workplace.
  • Develop, procure and maintain a fleet of vehicles that meets the needs of the organization for the next 20 years.
  • Develop a long-term strategy to construct sustainable fire stations/facilities to meet the dynamic needs of the workforce and the community.
  • Refine selection guidelines for site acquisition that incorporates a distribution strategy to enhance service delivery.

Goal 8: Automating Our Systems

Continually research, analyze, build and integrate robust technology systems to support business and emergency operations.

Strategy Statements

  • Establish and implement a governance structure that will review, approve, prioritize and support current and future innovative Information Technology solutions.
  • Continually analyze Information Technology best practices and collaboratively identify solutions with stakeholders.
  • Build, develop and maintain a cutting-edge Information Technology workforce to support the growing information technology demands of the organization.
  • Continually solicit input from customers regarding emerging needs.
  • Proactively represent our Department's needs and interests from conception to execution regarding Region-wide Information Technology system mandates.
  • Raise workforce technology aptitude to support our Department's technology usage.

Goal 9: Containing Risk

Develop an exemplary risk management strategy that embraces safety, identifies risks and integrates policies, best practices and risk prevention into every job every day.

Strategy Statements

  • Develop a dynamic Risk Profile that identifies each organizational risk and the frequency and severity of each risk.
  • Using our Department's Risk Profile, analyze and prioritize each risk based on the potential impact on the employee and the organization.
  • Develop and implement measurable mitigation strategies for each risk based on policies, training, changing practices and communication.
  • Monitor to ensure compliance and evaluate the effectiveness of risk strategies.
  • Create a risk prevention culture using active leadership and individual accountability.

Goal 10: Mitigating Disaster

Continually prepare the organization and its partners to mitigate catastrophic emergencies by utilizing disaster planning principles of prevention, preparedness, response and recovery.

Strategy Statements

  • Develop the infrastructure, equipment, processes and staffing models to implement strategically located Area Command Centers.
  • Evaluate Department capabilities against estimated needs (gap analysis) for various natural and human-caused disaster scenarios.
  • Review current business continuity plan and revise to include provisions for supporting the needs of employees' families and sustainment needs for all personnel.
  • Establish partnerships with our communities to prepare them for their specific roles during disaster prevention, preparedness, response and recovery.
  • Work with regional partners to develop a regional catastrophic MCI plan adaptable to all natural and human-caused disasters.
  • Expand use of social media to effectively communicate with our communities during all phases of a disaster.

Goal 11: Preparing and Engaging Our Citizens

Serve the community in new and engaging ways by creating customer service initiatives, life-enriching preparedness programs and strategic community relations.

Strategy Statements

  • Establish a strategic stakeholder team that will provide vision, direction and support for innovative customer service.
  • Enhance our community relations culture to inspire our operations personnel to engage with citizens in their local communities.
  • Evaluate current community outreach, education and preparedness programs for effectiveness and value.
  • Engineer innovative outreach programs that establish our Department as our community's best option for exemplary education, preparedness and public safety programs.

Goal 12: Communicating Our Value

Promote the organization's goals and programs through communications that create, strengthen and preserve favorable public opinion.

Strategy Statements

  • Establish a strategic stakeholder team that will shape and preserve favorable public opinion utilizing strategic internal and external communications.
  • Develop a strategic marketing plan which communicates the organization's value cost effectiveness, quality products and services and innovative public safety solutions.
  • Implement a strategic communications plan which identifies methods, content, delivery systems and measurements of success.