Sep 18, 2020 Civil Service Commission on 2020-09-18 3:30 PM

Okay, I'd like to call the September 18th meeting of the Civil Service Commission to order at 3.36, 3.35 p.m. First order of business is introduction of guests. We're all, we've all seen each other time and time again, so I guess there's really probably not any official guests. So if you feel slighted, let me know. I'll be happy to introduce you. Second order of business is to receive public comments. It's my understanding that we have no comments either written or call in. Okay, so we'll move on. Next order of business is to consider the approval of the minute from the July 9th meeting. Commissioner Baines, I would entertain a motion that we accept the minutes. I move that we accept the minutes as presented. I will second it. Did you see anything? Were there any discussion? Was there anything that we didn't, that wasn't correct? I was not aware of anything. I didn't see anything either, so. All right. So there's Lillian. Yep. Welcome. We're approving the minutes, Lillian. Okay. Did you see anything? No, I didn't see anything. Did the minutes need to be changed? No. So all in favor of approval of the minutes of the July 9th meeting, say aye. Aye. Opposed? All right. Passed. Next order of business is the certifying the police recruit list on your agenda. So I will defer to police. Jason, or Chief, do you want to make any comments about the list? I just want to kind of point out, if you can hear me, this test was the most diverse and the largest testing pool that we've had since we moved back into the position in January of 2018. We're really happy with it. We had a lot of female testers and a lot of diversity in the test list. So we're going to be sitting on about 17 positions to fill. So hopefully we'll be able to get a good talent pool off of this one. I was going to say the same thing. This was probably the most pleasant surprise to walk into that Saturday morning, having 83 people show up and the diversity that cannot be underscored enough. That was just amazing to see. So I was really happy. Commissioners, do you have questions about the list? I did not have a question. No, I don't. All right. I would entertain a motion that we accept and approve the certified recruit list as listed in the agenda. I'll motion that we approve the list as listed. Okay. I'll second. I'm sorry. That's all right. Any other any further discussion? Comments? I was just going to say that I probably echo the I'm glad to see so much diversity and not just ethnicity, but also gender. I was looking at just at the people who had failed and it seems like it's pretty across the board. I think six Hispanic males out of or 18 passed or six out of 18 failed. It's it would have been the lower number failed. All right. So six males out of 18. Yeah, we had a really good turnout. And one thing I noticed about two weeks ago is that the testing company did not originally offer a study guide, but they have started offering a study guide through their website for $20 an online study guide. So when we get our next exam approved and put on the website, I'm going to have a link to that study guide also added on there. And I think that is helping applicants. I was recommending the study guide for anybody that called the last two to three weeks when we found they added. That's awesome. Yeah. Our pass rate went up pretty good. Pretty good bet on this test. That's good. I think that's a really good start to trying to level that, you know, playing field of people that don't have others that, you know, already in the field that would that could be able to direct them. This is my chronic, I have a question. Are we or is the vendor charging for that study guide? Because, you know, some people may not be able to afford it. Is that you have to pay to get that? Or is that something that we're just making available to anyone? They're just making available online and it's $20. So it's not something that we pay for currently. And it's available in online format. It doesn't look like they offer it in like a written format or a printed format rather. Okay. Yeah, because if we were offering it, we certainly couldn't charge people. Right. Yeah. Okay. You know, that might be Jason, that might be something or Chief Dixon might be something to negotiate with them the next time you talk with them. I mean, to provide that, we're buying the test from them. They ought to at least put a study guide with it. It's my own personal thoughts, but might be worth asking the question. Yeah, I don't feel comfortable that a test that we're administering somebody should have to pay for a study guide and someone else might not, they're taking the same test. So it just was a concern for me when I heard that people were having to pay for that. Because in a sense, would that give someone who paid for it, I won't say an unfair advantage, but an advantage? So just something that kind of struck me is problematic, as you pointed out, Mr. Ramsey, or concerning, maybe not problematic. Well, the test itself does come with a study guide. When they initially come in to test, they're giving a short study guide and 25 minutes to study that before the exam. This is an additional optional study material along the lines of what you would find online with Amazon or such. In the past, I've recommended that people, you know, check with the bookseller of their choice and just get a police entrance exam study guide because they're somewhat standard in their, you know, areas of coverage. But if the vendor offers one, you know, if I was going to take the test, I would take the vendors over something that was off the shelf. So, and those run about $16 to $20 ish, you know, if you go to Barnes and Noble or Amazon and looked at them. I would have no issue with, you know, talking to the vendor and seeing if we had, like, maybe could get, you know, purchase a number of codes for those study guides or something. The problem comes when you have, you know, we had 177 sign up for the exam and 83 showed. And that's pretty typical you have. For us, it's normally in the range of about 200 that sign up and then 50 to 70 show. So, you know, how many codes do you buy? How much money do you spend on those? You don't want to waste money on codes that you don't end up using. >> You alleviated my concerns a little bit when you said everyone has access to a study guide. And if there's something above and beyond, then you can pay for that. So, that kind of alleviated it a little bit. >> Yeah. >> Okay. >> I agree. >> And I think if you're making the link accessible to everyone, like, the knowledge is there. This is there to help you if you want to do it, you know, this is where you can go. I think that's enough. I mean, you know, there's other people that pay $80 a month for a cell phone if you -- you know what I mean? Like, if this is something that you want, like, you'll be able to help. I wonder in the future, I don't know if this is even possible, but I was just thinking, you know, if there's -- you know, if there was something under the link that said if money is an issue, please contact, you know, this, that would put it in the person's hand to say, hey, if money is an issue, you know, maybe there's, like, a few scholarships, like, you know, I don't know. Like, I'm thinking LULAC could donate, you know, 20 -- codes to 20 study guides, you know, and make them accessible to you and you distribute as you would wish. Does that make sense? But it would still be in the hands of, like, the recruit or the person potentially taking the test to go -- to call and say I have a hardship that I'd really like a code, you know, anything like that. >> Yeah. Well, I think, again, just if you can -- so that you can find out, it would be nice -- like, as Michael said, it was, you know, having some kind of a study guide for everybody to have a sense of what kinds of questions are on there, that type of thing. That's good. >> That's only 25 minutes. That's 25 minutes before the test. >> Yeah, that's kind of weird. Couldn't that be -- could that be -- I mean -- >> That's the way the test is set up and that's a pretty standard -- when I tested in 1993, certainly not the same company, I'm sure, but it was the same sort of thing. You go in and you get a study guide to study for 25 minutes. And part of that in itself is the test to test your reading comprehension and your retention and your ability to recite details. So it's all structured as, you know, sort of part of the test, even though the study guide's not scored. There's no way for us to give those out earlier. It's all sealed, the test and the study guide, everything's sealed and we hand them out at the time of the seal. What I could do is, you know, I could see what the cost would be, you know, if I could purchase a number of codes or something and then if somebody requested that online study guide, I could issue them a code, I could check into that with the company. You know, see what they offer, at least. I'll be glad to do that. This is pretty new. It's just something that I happened to notice the other day, you know, two, three weeks ago. Well, I noticed, I know that some of the study, some of the standardized tests give us, they have a study guide that they produce, but then as you say, you can always go to your local bookstore and buy lots and lots and lots of books that talk about further information. So but at least something's available to them. All right. Any other comments on the test? Just a couple of comments. In looking at the demographics, I see we only had three African American males to pass, we had two to fail. And in one of my interactions with the police department in another capacity, a comment was made that in the current environment there's a little difficulty recruiting on the college campuses. So we've got that side. And then the other side is we had a higher than expected turnout. Any idea of kind of what's going on here? You know, the current environment, the current environment is a little difficult. It's a little difficult. And so I'm just trying to get a grasp, my arms around what's going on here, or maybe another perspective if you might. For us, recruiting has been difficult since March. Essentially every recruiting event that we normally participate in has been canceled because of COVID. So we've done some virtual things and put some information out there, social media, which may have helped our drive. Whereas before we had to, it was a little tougher for us to advertise like on Facebook and Instagram and get our recruiting flyers out and such. But we have all that sort of programmed in now where it auto goes out every few days. And we tend to get hits on those in registrations whenever those go out. So I think some of it could be, you know, there could be a ton of reasons. There could be some pushback that people see a lot of civil unrest and they feel like they want to step up and be part of the solution. I think some of it could be economic. When you see economic downturns and certainly with COVID, the economy is not in a great place. That tends to drive more people into public service exams because there's jobs to be had. That could be some of it, but we really don't know. It could be a combination of those things. It's just, you know, maybe a little bit of a fluke. But we've definitely upped our game in our advertising. And so maybe we're getting some hits from that. Thank you, Jason. Like I said, I was, you know, one of my other conversations, there was a remark made that, you know, the current environment has made it a little difficult on the college campuses. And I'm glad to hear that we had a good recruiting class. And we have a great number of candidates. And so we'll just continue to look at it and see what's happening. Thank you. Yes, sir. You know, it would be interesting when that is the age of these candidates. I don't, you know, I'm just wondering, maybe we're not recruiting college. Maybe these are older, like you said, people that are looking for a second career because the first, you know, is no longer available because of COVID. Interesting. That's all I have, Mr. Chair. Any other discussion? All right. Let's move on then to the fire department promotional exam materials. Mike, is that you? Yes, sir. It is. Thank you, Mr. Ramsey. So you have the list in front of you. Hopefully this is easy as we haven't added anything new. We moved some of the leadership books around. There are two new additions to two of the books, but as far as the names of the content that didn't change. So I believe the first list you have is fire battalion chief. On that list, we added step up and lead the leadership book to that list. The rest of that list are the books that were on it last year. On the fire captain list. So we're kind of adopt this philosophy of rotating these leadership books. So fire captain, it had extreme ownership on it last year. We're putting step up and lead on it this year. And fire drivers the opposite, but so fire captain, captain removed extreme ownership, which was on there last year added step up and lead and fire officer's handbook of tactics that has a new edition. It's the it was previously the fourth edition, and it's been updated with a fifth edition and a new copyright date. So we updated that book. Fire driver. As I was talking about the leadership books, we removed step up and lead from last year and added extreme ownership. Okay. And the fire driver list also has fire officers handbook of tactics. It's updated to the fifth edition and fire inspector principles and practice. It has a new edition as well. It's called the first revised enhanced first edition. I don't know why they didn't make it addition to but anyway, it's got a new copyright date of 2016 from the previous one was 2012. So that edition of that looks been updated. Okay. Those are the only changes the rest of those books on those lists are the ones you all saw last year. Any any questions for fire on the on the promotional list? No. My question is this. In comparison to previous years, is this pretty much a similar group of information? Are we emphasizing something over previous years or we're just basically, I don't want to say status quo, but did you feel like the presentation and the emphasis was sufficient? Are we emphasizing anything different this time? This is similar. This list is similar to to 2020 and 2019. You know, and that's kind of the list changed significantly with the change in our fire chief. But as far as the content, you're asking about the content, you know, we each rank has obviously specific content. Fire driver has, you know, the pumping and aerial apparatus book, you know, but they each, you know, prepare you obviously for higher ranks. So as far as the content, it's pretty consistent. I mean, we may change the books, you know, that the building construction related to the fire service book that's on fire driver and fire captain's list. That's a different building construction book than we then we've used in the past. But it covers, it covers the same the same content, you know, the same material that we need to know. Thank you, Mike. Yes, sir. All right. Any other questions? I would entertain a motion that we accept the promotional source materials for fire. I'll make that motion. I'll second system. Make sure there any other discussion that we need to have as a commission. Seeing good. I'm like running late today. I'm still hot for me outside. And the so the source material goes hand in hand with the test, right? Because the stuff the test is still being purchased from another vendor, but they're making sure to use all this source material or how did that get double checked to make sure that it's those hand in hand? Yes, ma'am. That is correct. The they will use this source material to create the questions that go on our test. Okay, so they create the test from what what you give them. I didn't know that I thought we're buying tests that were already pre written. They actually create question banks of questions for us. And then we'll select questions from that, that that bank to put on the test. Thank you. Yes, ma'am. Any other discussion questions? All in favor of approval of the promotional material for five departments say aye. Aye. Aye. Next police department promotional exam materials source materials who's hanging handling that one on the police side. Michael, is that you? It certainly can be in my in my muted. Not not now. I was going to defer to Chief Dixon if he wanted to chime in. But if he does not, I will. Michael, you're the director of training. Yes, sir. We made some very similar to the fire department, which I thought is interesting. We took some some of the material that has been on the promotional source material list for several years and removed it and put in some that are more reflective of where our organization is going. And they're certainly more contemporary works. And the fire department mentioned extreme ownership. We actually added that to the sergeant's list for one of our source materials this year. And the lieutenant's list got added a book called Who Moved My Cheese. Yeah, that one's been around for a while. It's a good book, though. We Chief Dixon informed the committee to make recommendations and we that's how the source material list was presented or gathered. That's we shared ideas and we talked about a number of things. And, you know, I'm pretty very I'm very pleased with the list that we have or the source material list that we have because we were using some materials that were really dated and they didn't really align with the values of our organization. All they were testing were candidates ability to regurgitate information that we didn't really use day to day. And so I like what we've come up with. I think it will do well for us. Is it the only question that I would have is are these the latest additions? Well, as far as I know, there's only one edition of Who Moved My Cheese and that's the original 90 and the extreme ownership. Yes, there is a new version of that book that has just recently come out, but it's they call it the updated version of the first edition. Okay, but everything all the other content is basically the must update must updated materials. Correct. Yes, sir. Okay. I have a question for Michael. Yes, sir. Michael, I'm looking at that first book for lieutenants. It says the president's task force on 21st century policing and it was 2015. So kind of what do we gather? What do we gain from a book like that? That was the recommendation that came from Dr. Williams. I know you've worked with him on some projects in the past and the president's task force on 21st century policing has the pillars of modern policing in it. And that is what we're getting from that. That's it's very much in alignment with what Chief Dixon brings in with his leadership and with the accreditation process. Thank you very much. And Lillian, you're you're muted. I was just going to mention that I tried to go on that page and the page says the page cannot be found. I don't know if that's the wrong link. Or maybe it's just out of date that it just says sorry, the page you're looking for can't be found. Yeah, I just checked it myself. It worked when I created this page, but I will I'll get we can get the link thing certainly. Any other discussion and any other questions? We entertain a motion that we approve the promotional materials for the police department 2020. I'm in commission that we approve this source material for police. Thank you. I'll happily second her motion. Okay. Any other discussion? Not all in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Opposed. Okay. Motion passes. Next order of business neck on the agenda is the LA for police police recruit. Who's going to that one, Jason? Sir, I'll handle it. So as you know, we had to cancel our May exam and reschedule till September because of COVID and Academy cancellation. It's awesome sort of reorganization in our Academy processes. So the idea for that exam is our next Academy will start January 4th, which is what we want to hire for the off of the current list. And the plan is to have an exam immediately after the Academy starts. So that gives us a maximum amount of time to work that list and hire for our following Academy. And I think, you know, it's a pretty quick exam as opposed to normally doing them about six months apart, but we're trying to kind of get back on track next January. And the idea is to hold an exam to Saturday after each Academy starts so we can get the list certified and have the maximum amount of time available between Academies to hire off of that list and hopefully process every applicant on the list. Questions? I noticed that we still have as a requirement the 30 years of college credit. I seem to remember that we had some discussion about possibly removing that. Am I making that up? It could be. I don't recall that. We require 30 college hours or two years active duty military in lieu of that. And that's, you know, a department standard. We actually did reduce the college requirement from 60 hours to 30 hours. We reduced the military requirement to two years because they offer two year infantry contracts. There's, you know, many agencies still do 60, 30 bachelor's degrees. It's kind of all over the place depending on the agency, but ours was actually reduced last year down to 30 from 60. Lillian, we did have that conversation in the use of force about a change and so we're probably, you know. Getting my wires crossed. Your wires never get crossed. All right. Other discussion? Is the link on here, is this where the link would go that would show how to purchase that setting guide? If you go to the Denton Police main page and in the middle of that page there's a tab that says join Denton PD. When you click on that tab, the following page is where the registration link for the test is when it's open. There's not a link there right now because we don't have a, we don't have the test approved. They'll go back up. And then where the registration link is, is where I'll request the webmaster put in the link to the study guide. Is there not a way that we could include the link here on the sheet that's going out? I don't know how you would do that specifically. I'm not that techy. When I try and, you know, just copy and paste the link to the study guide, it's a big long string of numbers and letters and characters and all of that. So. That would be maybe something for the distributor just to say, hey, is there an easier link that you guys could like a hyperlink with a different title that could be used? Yeah. I'm just hoping that line. I've got to talk to the, the city, you know, the city webmaster handles everything. It all goes through city hall. So I'm just going to request and ask if they can put that link up on that join Denton PD page in a, you know, in a prominent place where people can see that and have access to it. Okay. Any other questions? So when, when would this one go live? I'm sorry. So it's for January 9th. So when would it go live on the webpage? When we get approval from the commission for the exam, I send the information to the webmaster when we get the signed POA and probably my guess would be Monday. If even if I send it to them today, it's late enough during the day, then it'll probably be Monday before it goes up. There's like, there's like three or four months that they have to. Yes. Okay. Cool. Chairman Ramsey, I did have one more question regarding this. It seems like in some of our discussions that we had offline where you were being interviewed about things that were going on, you know, back in July, where we kind of had the individual meetings, there was some discussion about something that we were interested in changing before the next recruiting class. And I can't remember what it was. Do you remember Lillian? It was something that you had brought up implementing some changes and information that would go forward. We seem to spend a good bit of time on it this summer. So I don't remember it. I apologize, but I do remember it was tied to the next recruiting class. And so I thought we'd at least maybe refresh ourselves at this time to make sure we were all in sync regarding that matter. I mean, I think the bulk of the conversation that I remember from those meetings was just, you know, that we understood and that the people that were taking any kind of assessments would understand that and really I thought it was more for the promotional people would understand that we have to abide by, you know, what's written in the study, I mean, or what's written in the book. I don't know, Stephanie, if you remember something else. I have a lot in my head, but I can't remember. Yeah, I think it was one of those. I think we did. We did mention maybe from the vendor is, is attempting to get maybe more questions to put in the bank so we can have an opportunity to review and pick issues and maybe some good questions. Some questions here with the police department and the fire department prefer. But I think that was it. I can't recall anything else. I do. I do remember also, it was on the promotional exams, but I don't know if it's in the recruit that we talked about potential interviews serving as, you know, some kind of, you know, some, some that I would have that an interview would have some kind of weight, you know, not just these entrance exams, but that may be a potential interview or a panel might have some kind of weight in the points and how they're allocated. I think everything else that I've kind of been advocating for is just going back to the meet and confer whenever that's going to be, you know, reviewed again about potentially adding points for skills that are not easy to come by like bilingual, bilingualism, but I mean, that won't happen until the next meeting. Yeah, I think our discussion was, was primarily in the promotional and we didn't, we had, we did approve one POA, I think, but we didn't, there wasn't a lot of discussion. I didn't think about any significant issues. So we did a lot about the POA. I mean, I'm sorry about the promotional exams. Yeah, I mean, I do think, you know, I think the study guide will be a welcome addition. I think that might level the playing field for some people. I was doing the numbers here again. I had my notes at home, but I was doing the numbers again. And, you know, for black males, 67% of them failed the exam, you know, for Hispanic females, 67% of them failed the exam. The numbers kind of flip flop. Hispanic males, 33% of them failed the exam, black females, 29%, 31% of black, 31% of white males failed the exam, which is pretty comparable to Hispanic males and black females and 100% of white females passed. So as I'm looking at that, I know that there's tons of other factors, you know, but if I'm looking at just trying to, you know, level the playing field, if it's a $20 thing, if it was a $200, you know, testing guide, I would definitely advocate more for what can we do. But if it's a $20, you know, study guide that might help them to get their foot in the door and score a higher score. I mean, as long as it's made accessible to everyone, as long as everybody knows how to find that, you know, then I feel pretty good about that. Because at some point, you know, everybody has to take their own initiative. But, you know, as just as I look at these numbers, I'm like, man, there's a huge difference between white males and black males, 31 to 67%. You know, white females to Hispanic females, 67% compared to 0% fail. It can't just be ability, natural ability. There has to be something else that's factoring into that. So that's my only concern with these entry level civil service exams. I think everything else was more so in the promotional. Thank you, Lillian, for those statistics. I didn't take it to that extent, but I did notice that there was a disparity there. So thank you for the amplification. Any other discussion? I would entertain a motion that we approve the police recruit DOA. I'll second. I'll second. Any further discussion? Not. All in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion passes. Next order of business on the agenda is the next Civil Service Commission meeting. Let's see. Crystal? Sir. I do believe we will need to have one because I know we'll have police promotion testing to post, correct, Lieutenant? Yes, that is correct. Okay. So looking at the calendar, so that'd be in October. I'm sorry, when will that, when are we doing that promotional test? I don't believe there's. Sourced materials got to be posted for 90 days, correct? Okay. 91 days from today takes us to December the 18th, which is a Friday. The Monday following is December 21st. Not a big week of Christmas. Yeah, yeah. So really, do we not have anything? I mean, this is generally been a quieter time. It's usually the spring where we have our fun. So do we want to just schedule something and cancel it or? That's up to y'all. Now the source material has to be posted for 90 days, but we do have to post the actual test for 30 days. So if we're going to have a test in December or January, we need to have a meeting in either November or December. So we're recommending the next meeting for December. December. You're proposing a meeting for December. November. November and mid-December. November. Maybe early, earlier November. Yes. It's a little more difficult now that we have to schedule the DTV aspect. Let's look at November. Okay. So that calendar, it looks like you have a few dates to pick from. Do y'all want to look at Fridays, Mondays? There's one Tuesday. Actually, no, there's not a Tuesday, but there is a Tuesday available, but it's the week of Thanksgiving. So I don't think that would be a good Tuesday. So we're looking at Thursday, Friday, or Monday. You're muted. Yes, I'm fine. Someone just walked in. Oh, I thought you were talking to us. Why don't we send you the dates and we can look at our calendars and we're talking two months. I mean, we've got time to adjust our calendars, but you probably need to go ahead and set something up though. So send it soon. Will do. I'll send that today. Okay. Okay. Thank you. If there's nothing else for the good of the order, I would entertain a motion that we adjourn at 415. Is there a motion? A motion that we adjourn. I'll second. All in favor, say aye. Aye. Thank you all. Thank you all. Have a good weekend. Stay safe. Have a good weekend.