Canton Township working toward accreditation

CANTON TOWNSHIP, Mich. – Canton Township has a big goal: To have every department in its government accredited by the end of 2016.

The police department and leisure services is already accredited. Now municipal services and the fire department are working to do the same.

The fire department is working to be accredited by the Commission on Fire Accreditation International.

"It holds our department accountable to national and industry best standards," said Canton Fire Chief Josh Meier. "You have 18 months to complete all the requirements of accreditation and thats 263 performance indicators which evaluate your department from top to bottom and compare that to industry or national best practices and then there's 81 core competencies, those are deal breakers, you must meet those in order to receive accreditation."

Before accreditation is approved, the accrediting agency does an on-site assessment to review everything.

"You just make sure that all your procedures all your documents all the things that you do are state of the art. They're the best you can be at what you do and that's our goal," said Phil LaJoy, Canton Township supervisor.

LaJoy believes his community will be the first in Michigan to be completely accredited. He says its a continual process because they have to keep up their best practices to hold onto the accreditation.