required 24/7 fire station staffing. this table shown here shows the current annual count and percentage of the uniformed employees at the san francisco fire department by race. it shows that break down of fiscal year 08 through fiscal year 13-15. the fire department maintained a work force with -- from the range of 48 to 52 percent, minority representation over those years. and obviously that exceeds the 40 percent established by the consent decree. moving on to our findingment our first finding was related to organization and management and recommendations focused on issues of transparency. we made two recommendations to the

fire commission with regard to the documentation of their meetings. we recommended that meeting minute be transcribed completely and posted to the fire commission's website and we recommended that the fire commission consider relocating their meetings to city hall in order to increase participation of the public and to insure video recordings of those meetings through sfgovtv. we wanted that to be publicly documented and sources are allocated between the ems some suppression function to insure quality patient care and safe response time. as you may have seen on

the previous slide, we recommended that recruitment responsibilities be clarified. until 2002 the fire department had a dedicated recruitment staff. since then and since the transfer of the testing functions from fire to the department of human resources, the responsibility for recruitment has been unclear and there's no city department that's recruiting perspective fire employee and that responsibility has fallen onto various employee organizations. this table shows -- >> excuse me. when you say various employees, can you tell me what you're talking about? >> there's a few employee organizations representing uniformed -- including the black firefighters association and the asian american

firefighter association and i'm probably leaving out one or two others. >> these associations, are they independent or is it state wide. >> these are local san francisco organizations that are voluntary so their activities are again, volunteer -- voluntary, so what they perform is on their own time and dime. >> is the information uniform, or are they developing an announcement and i guess the mechanism on how they're communicating with the public. >> the materials that those employee organizations produce for recruitment activities are generated from within, so the department does not have an over sight over what's produced and sort

of what the message is that they're putting out to the public. is that the question? >> there's no way that we can maintain or manage a uniform message that these individual organizations are using to communicate with people? >> that's correct. not at this time. >> are these recruitment tool to the best of your knowledge, are there done in multiple languages? >> as we understand it, there's recruitment materials produced by the employee organizations that are produced in multiple languages. but i can't speak to specifics on that. but as we understand, they are. thank you. >> the table on this slide shows the percentage of female applicants from 1988 through 2009. as you can see over recent years, the number of female applicants has been

trending down. so even though currently the composition of female employment in the fire department work force is meeting that ten percent threshold, the decline in the number of applicants seem to indicate that attention should be focused on recruitment efforts and we have recommended that the fire department develop a recruitment strategy and plan and that they coordinate with employee organizations actively around their individual recruitment efforts. we also recommended that as the department of human resources implements it's new testing model by which firefighters will be tested for recruitment into the department, that they provide -- dhr provides the chief and commission ongoing performance results of that model as its rolled out so that the department can

insure that it's recruiting the full force that it needs. so the process of selecting candidates for the h 2 which is the entry level firefighter class or the academy class has been complicated overtime by the large number of applicants. 2009 was the last time the test was given and there was 10,000 applicants for the job. this is a need for secondary criteria and a secondary process i and the fire chief can make selects from that volume of candidates. we recommend those criteria whether they're language skills, fire science, course work, or employment as an emt or paramedic be made clear in

the job announcement to have fair opportunities for the applicants. in addition, since the 1997 merger of the ems function into the fire department, there have opinion changes in employee classifications, particularly with regard to the cross trained firefighter, paramedic class. today, there are two classifications, there's designations and the h 3 level 3 and the h 2 p. and they have identical jobs and identical skills. we recommend the fire department and dhr work together to review the department staffing needs and insure that the classification adequately reflect the needs that they have in the department and make any necessary changes. >> in the area of promotions, the fire department, we made a

few recommendations in our audit. the first is regarding the test development process. specifically the development of the answer key. the current practice that the department of human resources utilizes and has utilized for many years now is to create the answer keys to the test concurrently with the administration of the test. so that means that the test is developed, applicants are recruited to take the exam, but the answer key for the exam aren't developed until they're sitting and taking the test. we believe this prevents the department from identifying any problems in advance with the test instrument. we believe that goes against standard practices for ensuring liability of the test instrument and we recommend that the department of human resources

review this process and identify any opportunities to identify problems with the test instrument prior to its administration. secondly, we recommend that the fire department clarify the training and skills that are required for advancement in the department to insure that all supervisor staff has sufficient knowledge to perform the duties related to the advanced position. we recommend that they do this through developing a professional development plan which would outline advancement requirements and the advancement process. finally we recommend that the department insure that promotional test timelines are aligned with projected retirements and we'll talk more about that in the next section which is on section planning. despite recommendations over the past ten

years and various audits, the fire department doesn't incorporate succession planning into its operations. as shown on the slide here, a review of current employee agents and service shows a number will be reaching retirement age in the next five to ten years. we recommend therefore that the department conduct a detailed analysis of retirement data and incorporate those results into multi year hiring and recruitment plans. we believe this particular -- we believe this is important by maintaining diversity in the work force. the last within the audit was overtime use. shown on the table here, overtime use at the san francisco fire department has increased by 19 million or 90 percent since fiscal year

09-10. because overtime is less costly than filling vacant positions, the department has come to rely on it. but studies shows overtime includes safety risk. we ask that the department increases fte by 138 employees. and that would increase it to one thousand hundred hundred 76 total. we ask for vacation usage, so it can avoid the peek of vacation usage over the summer which requires significant overtime during those months. we would like to thank the management and the staff, the san francisco fire department and the department of human resources for their assistance during this process. and we are happy to take any questions

from the committee. >> great. thank you. okay. any of my colleagues have any additional questions? >> i have a couple of questions. i can jump in. so i wanted to talk a little bit about -- my question is directed for the dhr and the fire department. >> we're going to change the order a little bit. we're going to call up dhr first and then the fire department afterwards. >> thank you. >> can i ask one question. just about overtime, this has been a long time conversation for us here at the board and a couple of

years ago and the director micky will remember this. we tried to think of different ways to manage it including trying to put limits on the overtime that an employee can do to spread out the work among others if the given the 90 percent jump over the last few years that we have discussed, but it's a really significant number, what has been your experience in attempts in the last year or two to bring these number back. nothing seems to be working at this point and it's pretty frustrating for all of us and it's frustrating for management and us at the board and dhr and frustrating for rank and file. >> to the chair, we looked at the overtime specifically in terms in how they incorporate into the staff. we didn't look at overtime or overtime control, but in

response to your we, one specific thing that happened in the spring was prior to that, individual firefighters didn't have a cap of overtime hours they can work. that was implemented in the spring. they put a cap which is high on overtime hours. it didn't reduce the number of overtime overall as it reduced it per firefighter. >> i'm sorry, did not reduce it over all. just reduced it per firefighters. >> numbers are through the fiscal year 2013, so it was implemented late in fiscal year 2013. but it increases mandatory overtime so the firefighters who might not want to have to work overtime are required to since other firefighters have reached their cap. we looked at the practices in the fire department and a lot is correct. on an an to

hour basis, it's cheaper for overtime than to pay regular pay because you're not paying the ben fets. over the last several years, they started reducing the budgets for salary and not filling vacant positions, but we looked at what should they be filling and with he think there's significantly under filling positions not leaving firefighter positions vacant and filling that with overtime. so our recommendation is that they need to increase the amount of budgeted positions that they put in their budget each yeah. there's a cost to that, but we think that's correcting a historical problem and they have allowed the number of position to go vacant and rely on overtime. >> have you looked at other city firefighters and how this issue is managed? i can't imagine that

we're the only ones gravelling with this one. >> we didn't look at other fire departments, but we used other measures at other fire departments and how they staff and how they back fill for overtime and positions and put that into their budget. what we looked at as standard with the approach. >> i look forward to this discussion with hr and the chief. there was almost a 99 percent increase. we have to figure out how to get a better handle on that. >> thank you. any other comments or questions. >> your audit found it was a $1.6 million savings. can you talk about that speaker: when we say -- so the increase by the net, the

increase -- we figure the budget will go up by $5 million if you reduce overtime, but there's other benefits that can be quantified by that. but there are savings, one of the biggest ones through the cost of fighting complaint about the testing process. this one -- >> the what kind of process? >> testing. they'll be saving there if the process were sort of clarified. >> okay. when you say "savings", where do you identify? >> i have to go in and look at the specific numbers here. we found there would be about -- one of them was -- the staff and resource between ems and suppression would increase the reimbursement. one of the problems that we didn't get

to talk about. the department gets reimbursed for evidence cost and there's an imbalance, we believe, between the staffing for ambulance or paramedics and emt and the staffing for fire suppression. in our report on page 20 of our report, we show the increase in the medic to follow call. those are reversible and we estimate they'll be 2 to $3 million generated by having the right sort of medic that can be available. the other one was a savings, but there was a settlement this year, a legal settlement to firefighters who sued on the testing process and we calculated that into if there were a reduction in these types of lawsuits they'll be a saving. >> what was the settlement

amount? >> we didn't look at it such as cost. >> i think it was $3.7 million. >> did you take into consideration in the evaluation of this report some of the findings that the court found in relationship to that settlement? >> no, we did not. >> okay. and that's all i have. i want to thank amanda for their help on this. >> thank you. next up, we have dhr. micky calihan will be presenting. >> thank you supervisor, micky human resource department. i

want to thank you for the opportunity to comment on this report and we appreciate the attention paid by the budget and legislation and the subject of recruitment and promotion in the fire department. all the tension that was mentioned, i don't think it was apart of the report. i want to introduce people. we have linda who is the city director and she's an expert in the subject of labor market availability. and we have john who is the head of the city and testing program. before he joined us in san francisco, he was in charge of all public safety testing in the city of new jersey, so he's an expert in that field. i want to thank jennifer johnston for attending and she can address issue that's you have about the

civil service requirement and the services we operate our recruitment programs. we appreciate the attention paid to the important subjects, and it is very important that we do pay attention because we need to maintain a diverse work forcement what's not highlight in the report is the city's success in this area and maintaining diversity. the work force is 52 percent of color and 16 percent women. these levels strip the percentages of these groups in the labor market. san francisco is the highest in the nation of the number of women. we're at 16 percent compared to 3 los angeles and less than one percent in new york city. for

example, madison, montgomery maryland, and austin texas. the market of women are 77 percent, and year at 16 percent. that speaks volumes for the efforts of our chief and the testing and the recruitment to bring in a diverse poolment the labor market ability for african americans are 17 percent, but the chief's recent hire, 11 percent african american. we're doing well in this area. and i'll speak more about that. what's more impressive about these achievements is that the city is faced with a difficult task of maintaining diversity and the changes in the law. prop 209, affirmative action in 1997 and the new haven richie case which made the

news, it was a firefighter case, prevented -- clearly established that an employer is prevented from responding to adverse impact after administering an exam. so we have to put all of our eggs in one basket. none of these legal factors are considered in the auditor's report. we've gone well beyond -- >> while you're discussing this, we he had a jury award that was close to $40 million of promotions and i think we all understand the impact of prop 2089 but we have jew ishl environments that saying we're not doing our jobs correctly, so how do you reconcile those two things? >> i can't properly comment on the litigation because it's still in process, but i'll point out that was an age discrimination case and

it involved 15 firefighters and more of 200 who were promoted and who were over the age of 40. we disagree with the verdict and that's in process. the litigation -- the findings the require did not rely on any of the points that the auditor raised in this report. so i can address that further. >> as i pointed out, we've done more than the decree. but we also continue to work on new ways to increase diversity. the last time with he had a firefighter recruiting, we went down to the testing hall and observed the test hall and we were disappointed in the diversity in the test taker. and we had made great efforts

-- we sent notice to various publications and interest groups to try and get them to send people over to take the test and we didn't have the pool we wanted. >> do you have some examples of some names of the particular groups that you sent notices to? speaker: i don't have them with me. >> that's concern with the response from both the fire department and dhr is you have communicate groups listed. you talk about interest groups but you provide no examples and i don't recall even during the tiement when i was on the fire department commission, any information around any recruitment effort or anything to signify there's testing, significant that there's an opportunity. i'm confused by the information provided in the response as it relates to outreach because i'm an wear of the organization that's were outreached too. so i'm trying to understand what are those specific community group

and what are the outreach efforts because clearly people want -- people were able to find out about it, but some of our under representative groups were not. >> i like to speak about that point. weblg go back and look at -- we can go back and see who we sent it too. the last recruitment was in 2009. people that have support for being in the fire service, you'll meet people whose father and grandfather was in the fire service and that's not a diverse group. they know when an exam is coming, and there are family members that say, come take the test. they see ourselves as firefighters, but we want to find people from the community where they have support for applying and the studies shows that continual contact and immediate followup is how you're able to get people to take the test. that's why moving through a

continuance testing model which is the result of our experience in 2009. we're looking to increase that ability. it would be a waste of resources to suggest to the department or dhr and go to a group and say, come out. don't you want to be a firefighter. come out in two years. we have to shake up how we do it and i'll talk about our experience so far because we started that in the police department and we're pleased to the results. to get back to your point, we'll look through our records and see who as contacted. it was only in 2009 and there wasn't anything else because there's a lack of eligible list. what i want today do -- we have significant concerns the report beyond the fail your to highlight the department's success and diverse if i cajun and there's

findings we can't agree with and i'd like to share those with you. i touched on the available labor market. we chose to use the general population to compare the diversity of the fire department. this includes many who are not in the work force and can't be firefighters even if they were. i'm talking about babies, retirees, and people who are too tired to work. we would identify them as having experience -- the comparison isn't an inaccurate of our recruitment. it's very misleading. the available labor force is a correct comparative and that

was used during the consent decree. it's used by the federal government for all the reporting and in fact our work force utilization, we look at the fire department. every five years we submit that and that's available for your review and it's on the dhr website. using the incorrect comparison, even then, the only area in which the report finds that we're doing less well than we should be in trms of the statistics -- swhe be in terms of the is statistics. the labor market available market is less than 15 percent. in this area, we're doing well. that doesn't mean we can't do better.

>> can i ask you as a last graduation class, were there any asian folks that graduated from that academy class? >> i believe -- dhr, we don't have the graduation statistics, but i can have the chief address that. >> i wanted to know -- because you mentioned we're doing very well and it's my understanding and i want clarity on how many total and how many asian and if we had no asian, anyone from the asian community graduate from this last academy, to me that's not doing well. that's the point i'm trying to make. >> one the problems we have is our list. people applied four years ago to be firefighter and some of those individuals may have gone onto other career choices which further limits the pool of people we're able to look at. moving to continuance