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

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®CITY OF SOUTH BEND I OFFICE OF THE CLERK He went on, Some of the goals and challenges include, of course, the completion of constructing Fire Station Nine (9). We want to continue the positive trends of our recruitment committee. I put Fire Fighter Cancer Prevention down because our department has had to put a really significant focus on this particular issue. We have several members of our department that have cancer. Some are in remission and some have active diseases that are really taking a toll. It is tragic. At our department we have hired a company to do an assessment of all of our stations and come up with ways in which we might be able to prevent or reduce risk of cancer causing agents within the fire stations. We have a turnout gear cleaning policy, we've made other policy changes that include wearing a full SCVA while we are doing overhaul in a building. Intuitively, that has not always happened within the fire service and that is a nation-wide problem. We have gone out of our way to make sure that decontamination equipment is on scene for our Fire Fighters to do gross decontamination on the scene and then a more full decontamination once they get back to the station. Also exercising and living a healthier lifestyle. We had noticed several Fire Fighters getting skin cancer or lesions. So at our training center,there is sun screen outside the building so that way they can use it. We have training programs for the individuals on our department. We are actively training our personnel to be sure they are taking active strides in reducing those risks. He continued,We have also created a Fire Fighter peer support group. That helps us combat PTSD within the Fire Service. We have had a couple of individuals over the last few years go off on disability, unfortunately, for PTSD-related issues due to different types of calls and experiences they have had. We've been doing this in conjunction with some outside partnerships as well as with the Police Department. We look forward to getting that up and running and having some success with that program over the course of the next twelve (12) to eighteen (18) months. Obviously we have budget challenges we look forward to in 2020. We are commencing community risk reduction activities to reduce injury and death. That never goes away and that is something we work on every single day. Every person in our department has the responsibility to make sure they are working on prevention. That includes our smoke alarm program, trauma prevention programs,the community paramedicine opportunities I previously mentioned,we have some other things we are also doing. We have a partnership with Memorial Hospital to install car seats at multiple stations. Several of our Fire Fighters are actually car seat technicians and we work,through a grant program with Memorial Hospital to safely install car seats for children. He went on, I mentioned our long-term capital funding issue and that is tied to the expected decrease in Medicaid reimbursements that may or may not come in the future. One (1) last thing to mention about challenges, it is a real challenge replacing Fire Fighters who retire who haven't enrolled in the DROP Program with new Fire Fighters. And with all of the great news about job creation and fewer unemployed people in the County, that means that we are struggling to find those employees. We are fighting with other employers for those quality applicants.As more good jobs are created, it becomes more difficult to track those folks in our department. We do have a recruitment committee and, as I mentioned before, they actively participate in recruiting quality applicants to our department. I couldn't help but notice former Council Member Davis Jr. is in the room. He would remember when we were initially talking about putting this committee together, the department was not hiring individuals below the age of twenty-one(21). We actually changed that policy and we take applications from individuals all the way down to eighteen (18). We have actually had a multitude of individuals that otherwise would have gone to the trades, the military, to college, but they saw this as an opportunity to start a career right out of high school. That has been a benefit. I mentioned we just hired our first(1St) minority female onto our department, and EXCELLENCE I ACCOUNTABILITY I INNOVATION I INCLUSION I EMPOWERMENT 455 County-City Building 1 227 W.Jefferson Bvld I South Bend,Indiana 466011 p 574.235.9221 If 574.235.9173 1 TTD 574.235.5567 I www.southbendin.gov 15