The Town of Oatsville is seeking fire service from Blackwell County for a fee. The new Blackwell Board of County Commissioners is interested in a potential contract with Oatsville as a way to generate additional revenue for the county. For seasoned county officials, Oatsville has been noted for its older housing stock and its high calls for fire and emergency medical services. Furthermore, the county has had it own financial challenges, which has precluded new hires.
The new town mayor of Oatsville has been promoting a town wide home buyer program hat includes low interest loans to increase owner occupied housing, and, as such, he has argued that the program promotes more investment in the town’s neighborhoods and is increasing fire safety. Therefore, the mayor has argued that a possible contract with the county will not place an additional burden on limited county resources.
The Blackwell county executive has asked you to look into this issue before any interest or commitments are made to the Town. You, in turn, have asked the Oatsville town manager to send you information on number of fires during the past year in all nine districts of the town. The information also includes average age of housing stock and percentage of owner occupied housing in those districts. This information is in the SPSS dataset fires.sav.
Analyze the relation between number of fires and age of housing stock. Next, look at the relationship between these two variables while taking into consideration owner occupied housing. What do the results show about the mayor’s home buyer policy? What would you recommend to the county executive?