Tuesday, February 20, 2018
Below is a Letter to the Editor from Mayor Sarno, along with the List of Department Heads and the job description for the city’s Equal Opportunity Administrator.
Mayor Sarno states that Dan Hall, the City’s Equal Opportunity Administrator was hired on 7-5-88. Dan is responsible for reaching out to communities that may be under represented within a department and seeks to encourage applicants from those communities. His role with a civil service promotional process is limited in that the promotion process under civil service rules are determinative of who is a candidate for promotion, i.e. you need to be in grade for so many years before being eligible to take an exam and those selected for promotion are done so using the exam score results. Dan conducts diversity training, attends job fairs at local colleges, works with area media outlets and community groups to promote employment opportunities, primarily for minority candidates, and is also responsible for conducting investigations of claims of harassment.
The Mayor’s Office has already discussed changing this title, (concluding it is outdated), the job description, and duties for FY 19 and expects to be making these changes in FY 19.
The Department Head List provides the requested data for our 31 Department Heads. The protected class information is as follows:
Percentage of female department heads 41.9% (13 out of 31)
Percentage of minority department heads 22.5% (7 out of 31)
Percentage of self-identified veterans department heads 6.4% (2 out of 31)
In addition to the aforementioned information, the Springfield Police Department is the most diverse Police Department in the State and one of the most diverse in New England. Of the 372 members of the Springfield Police Department, 171 are people of color representing 45.9% of the composition of the workforce.
The Springfield Fire Department is also one of the most diverse in the Commonwealth. 93 of the 171 sworn officers are people of color at 54.5%.