08-08-18 Personnel and Finance (#2)

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®CITY OF SOUTH BEND I OFFICE OF THE CLERK to, will include eight (8) Fire Fighter recruits from Michigan City and we have seven (7) of our own graduating as well. Our department is working on trying to further diversify our department. This ,year, alone, our department will have sworn on seventeen (17) new recruits. Of those seventeen (17), five (5) are minority, four (4) are female and four (4) are veterans. Those are the demographic groups we have been targeting to bring into our department. Only one percent (1%) of the general population of the United States are veterans. Seventeen percent (17%) of our entire department are veterans. We have forty-three (43) veterans out of two hundred fifty-six (256) individuals. A couple of these recruits checked a couple boxes and were maybe a minority and a veteran, were a female and a minority or a female and a veteran. In fact this year we swore on our first (lst) female minority member of our department as well. We continue working on that with our recruitment process. We are in the process of creating an applicant list for the next two (2) years and for that group,twenty-six percent(26%) of those individuals are minority or female and ten percent (10%) of them, on that list, are veterans as well. We are making some strides. He continued, We are completing the Fire Grounds Survival program for the entire department. It is a program through the IAFF to make sure that Fire Fighters can self-rescue if they are caught in a building or in an obstruction in a building on fire. Our Smoke Alarm Installation Program has led to over 1,500 smoke alarm installs since April in targeted neighborhoods. We have worked on our SB Stat Program with the Mayor's Office to target very specific neighborhoods that were in need. The other thing we have done is, since the fire fatality that happened about a month ago, we targeted the area specifically surrounding that tragic situation. We knocked on doors and advertised ahead of time. We installed two hundred and seventy-eight (278) smoke alarms in that first (1S) canvas around that particular area. There were only thirty-six (36) houses out of two hundred and nine (209) houses that actually had a working smoke alarm in their home. So if you can imagine, the amount of impact that will have later on down the road, those neighbors had the awareness of a tragic circumstance happening around their home. We had some family members that waited for us to get there because they were so worried about it. It was a big deal and the Red Cross has been a great partner with us in programing and by providing alarms and volunteers. He went on, We also have created the South Bend Fire Department Community Paramedicine Program. As I mentioned before we started seeing patients in July. We purchased a new aerial ladder truck which is set for delivery later this ye . We have continued the dual credit high school program that we have in conjunction with Ivy Tech and the South Bend School Corporation. We have fifteen(15)new students enrolled for the new fall class. When we started this program many years ago, I mentioned to the Council at that time that this is a long-term recruitment tool for us. We want to bring more local kids into the Fire Service, especially our department, and give them good quality jobs with pensions and benefits and everything else. On top of that, knowing the South Bend School Corporation has a significant amount of minority students, we really targeted that area. I'm happy to share with the Council that in our new applicant group, we actually have a couple kids that have graduated our program and are now in the application process. That is refreshing for us to know we are having some sort of an impact. He continued, On top of that, we have also received funding from the Assistance of Fire Fighters Grant Program, which is a Federal Grant Program, and it has allowed us to pay eighty percent (80%) of wages and benefits for three (3) Fire Fighters for a three (3) year period. Additionally, we were just given an AMG Grant and it was just announced three (3) weeks ago, in which we received some funding to be able to install exhaust removal systems from our garages in a few of our stations. EXCELLENCE I ACCOUNTABILITY I INNOVATION I INCLUSION I EMPOWERMENT 455 County-City Building'227 W.Jefferson Bvld I South Bend,Indiana 466011 p 574.235.9221 If 574.235.9173 1 TfD574.235.5567Iwww.southbendin.gov 14