Diversification seems to be the driving force behind recent moves by the Fort Smith City Board of Directors to oust Civil Service Commission Sam “Chip” Sexton and potentially eliminate the Commission all together, but the current concerns seemingly do not extend to the Fire Department, at least not publicly.
FSFD Chief Phil Christensen said on Wednesday that the fire department faces the same challenges recruiting minority applicants for entry level jobs and while his department is a little more diversified that the FSPD his department operates under the same rules and regulations as the police department.
“Behind the scenes there is some talk about trying to diversify and I have reached out to our minority employees in an effort to find out what we can do t recruit more minorities,” said Christensen. “We have been able to fly under the radar a little more than the police department, but we do all of our promotions from within the department and that’s the way it has always been.”
“I don’t have a solution,” said Christensen. “I’ve been misquoted by one of the online news sources in the past as saying we don’t recruit minorities when what I actually said is we don’t target any specific group when we recruit. To me, it’s about who is eligible, who wants the job and who can do the job.”
Christensen refused to comment on why he feels “diversification” has suddenly become a driving force in the city Board of Directors attempt to bypass the Civil Service Commission when it comes to making supervisory hires but said when you take into consideration of the demographics of the area, his department, the numbers are deceiving.
Christensen says current staffing levels for the fire department, which has one of the highest ratings a municipal fire department can achieve, stands at 156 total employees, 149 of which are uniformed personnel. The racial breakdown is 133 Caucasians, one Hispanic, three African-Americans, 11 American Indians and one Asian or other. That number includes three females, one of which is a driver.
That would make the African-American percentage of employees a minuscule 0.019%, which is the same percentage of female employees of the department overall.
However, when one look at the eligible pool of potential applicants based on the latest available census numbers, the numbers go up considerably. (These numbers are based on census numbers for the city of Fort Smith are are adjusted for the entire metropolitan are which includes a number of counties in western Arkansas and eastern Oklahoma)
In order to be a certified firefighter for the Fort Smith Fire Department, an applicant must be between the ages of 21 and 35 and possesses the equivalent of a high school diploma.
African-Americans are 9 percent of the total population, and females outnumber the males in the city by 51.3-48.7 percent. and the median age is 34.9 years.
By age, 15.4 percent of all residents fall within the 21-35 range, meaning that Fort Smith residents eligible for employment by the fire or police departments total approximately 13,552 people. Of that total, 9 percent are African-American which reduces the eligible pool to 1,217 eligible candidates.
In addition, 23 percent of the population never graduated high school. Using that as a general factor across all races that eliminates another 280 candidates making the total hiring pool among African Americans approximately 937 people.
Taking it a step further, 67.9 percent of women say they would never consider a career in law enforcement or for the fire department, and suddenly the number of age and education eligible potential African-American applicants for a job in the department suddenly drops to a mere 471 people, or 0.05 percent of the entire population of the city of Fort Smith. (A person doesn’t have to live in Fort Smith to work for either department. Adjusted for the demographic make-up for counties in the surrounding demographic marketing area, the number drops to 0.039%.
“Plus, you have to consider that people aren’t just lining up for these jobs, which are demanding and and dangerous, to get at that starting pay, which is about $10.00 an hour,” said Christensen.
The difference between those eligible to be employed and those that are actually employed by the fire department is 0.02% — two tenths of
one-percent.
When you run the numbers, you get similar results for the police department as well although there is a slight difference in percentages based on the number of unfilled positions and the demographic make-up of the police department.
In reality, the Hispanic population is much more under-served as a percentage of the population employed by the fire or police department than any other ethnic group.
Some city officials have turned the issue of the Civil Service Commission’s reluctance to hand over control of hiring supervisory level employees to Police Chief Nathaniel Clark into a race-based one and while discrepancies are apparent in both the fire and police departments, given the overall number of eligible potential employees in the hiring pool, a crisis may have been invented where none actually exist.
In addition, one city director in a recent Facebook post basically inferred that members of the Commission were racist and that was the only reason Clark’s proposal was met with resistance.
An item has been placed on the agenda for the July 11 regular meeting of the board of directors seeking the dismissal of Sexton from the Commission. BOD member Andre’ Good has publicly stated if the Commission refuses to grant Clark’s proposal, then the “antiquated” commission should be disbanded.
The meeting for July 11 has been set at the Fort Smith School District Service Center on Jenny Lind Road at 6 p.m.
Ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, etc. should not be considered when reviewing applicants. The only issue that matters is “ability”. If the applicant can pass the written test and the physical agility test, the applicant should be eligible to be hired. When a firefighter enters a burning building, he/she should not have to have another firefighter backing him/her up that was hired to meet a race or gender quota but was otherwise unqualified to be hired. All firefighters should have the mental and physical strength to meet each crisis. There are many African/American, Hispanic, Asian, and female people in our community that can meet the standards. Anybody can apply and be tested at the publicly posted times. If there are not enough members of a subgroup with a desire to apply, then the department should just move on with the applicants that they have. The Fire Department has enough on its plate keeping the personnel trained and ready and shouldn’t have to waste time engaging in arbitrary recruitment.
Choosing whom to hire based on the color of their skin is dumb. Is racist. Is stupid.