09-07-16 Personnel and Finance - Laserfiche WebLink

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Neighborhood meetings are anticipated to go over the design plans and explain to the neighbors what the project looks like, then it will hopefully go out to bid late in the fall to be able to start building when everything thaws in the spring. Additionally, there has been no decision made on Fire Station Nine (9). Chief Cox stated that he knows there has been a lot of opposition, and has spoken to a lot of councilmembers about it. They ended up deciding to work with Community Investment and the Mayor's Office to see if there are some alternate locations. They have also been talking to people at IUSB, but there wasn't property over there that the department would be able to use. However, they have identified two (2) different sites that meet their needs. They are outside of Potawatomi Park, and the Department of Community Investment is currently speaking to their owners about what it would look like if the City would purchase those properties. He stated that one (1) of the alternate sites is an affordable solution that the Fire Department is confident about. The idea is to work with everybody to come up with a common solution. Councilmember Dr. Varner asked if one (1) of the pieces of property is across the street from Martin's Supermarket, and Chief Cox stated that it is a very expensive piece of property, and they are not looking at it. Committeemember Voorde asked if they are looking at Louise and Mishawaka Avenue, and Chief Cox responded no, they are not. It does not fit the needs of the Fire Department. Folks have suggested the Newman Center, the River Park Furniture site, the old school, and the Wooden Indian, and there are many reasons why these sites do not meet our needs. We need to remain on Mishawaka Avenue, and we need to stay central within the district, so we need to be between Ironwood and Twyckenham. Chief Cox explained that they also anticipate capturing their efforts of recruitment through diversity and hiring in 2017. They feel like they made a good proposal to the Mayor, Controller's office, and to the Council in order to be able to take advantage of the diverse hiring list that will be in place. We have six (6) women on the list that have passed the physical agility test, which is more than there have ever been. There are fourteen (14) Latino candidates, and typically that number is in the low single digits. There are eight (8) African- Americans, two (2) Asians, and six (6) mixed -race individuals. That equates to thirty percent (30 %) of our total candidates who went through this part of the process. We feel really good about the diversity associated with this list, additionally, we've changed our testing process, and we've made the written exam a pass /fail instead of a ranking based on scores. Written exams in public safety are typically associated with disparate impact, so we hired out a private company who gave us a cut- off point that recruits had to reach to pass those courses. After that, we went back and looked at the interview processes over the past twenty (20) years, and realized that we had very little if any disparate impact associated with our interview process. Now, instead of one (1) interview board, we're using two (2) separate interview boards and taking an average of the two (2) to create their spot on the list, thereby removing as much 7