South Bend Tribune
SOUTH BEND, Ind. — The South Bend Fire Department soon will begin accepting applicants as young as 18 in order to better compete for recruits.
The decision comes as the department faces increasing competition in the jobs market because of the improving economy.
“What we wanted to do is we wanted to open up the process to kids at a more opportune time, right when they get out of high school,” South Bend Fire Chief Stephen Cox said.
Cox noted the department’s most recent class included just 91 recruits, down from 150 to 200 in the past, “which was a red flag for us.”
The department currently requires that recruits be at least 19 years of age, down from 21 years of age about 10 to 15 years ago.
That said, active-duty firefighters must be at least 21.
Lowering the age to 18 is expected to help the department better compete with the military and building trades for talent, Cox said.
The change will take effect with the next recruiting class in November.
“Anecdotally speaking, this exact scenario played out for me,” Cox said. “I wanted to get on the fire department but wasn’t 21, so I joined the Army for four years.”
South Bend is one of just a few departments in the state to lower the age of recruitment based on a new understanding of statewide public pension laws.
Most other departments require that firefighters be at least 21.
“It was kind of urban legend, I guess, that the state had a requirement for 21,” Cox said. “But the (city) Legal Department looked at the (pension) requirements and confirmed that although there is a hard cap of age 36 to get into the department … there is nothing in the (pension) rules that say you can’t drop the age down to 18.”
Common Council member Henry Davis Jr., D-District 2, had been pushing for a lower recruitment age for some time.
He welcomed the change this week.
“Being a firefighter is a career endeavor, it needs to be regarded as that,” Davis said. “The more we begin to look at it as a job … you can have after high school, the better off we are at recruiting.”
Davis said he’s hopeful the change will improve minority recruitment as well.
Cox is somewhat less optimistic on that front.
“To be frank, I’m not 100 percent certain there will be a correlation between lowering the age and (recruitment of) specific (minority) groups,” Cox said.
Of the department’s current roster of 250 firefighters, all but 21 are white, Cox said, even as minority populations in the city continue to grow both in number and as a percentage of the whole.
Cox said the department is working to improve upon that number by streamlining the application process and more tightly focusing on educational outreach.
“This isn’t a secret and it isn’t anything we’re hiding from anybody — it’s a national problem,” Cox said.
“Frankly,” he added, “a lot of people in law enforcement and the fire service have done a poor job of going out and recruiting the right people, kind of sitting back and saying those people should be motivated to come to us.”
The new, lower recruitment age is part of a broader effort to improve recruitment in what is becoming an increasingly competitive job market, Cox said.
The department also is partnering with Ivy Tech Community College and South Bend Community School Corp. on a high school recruit academy.
And it is working with the local Girl Scouts to introduce young girls to the profession as part of a two-day summer academy.
“That’s necessary in order for this recruitment effort at 18 to work,” Davis said of the high school academy. “You have to have some type of grooming experience.”
Said Cox, “The key for us is that we expose (youth) to the fire service as a career. So we’re trying to get more exposure in regards to that.”
Copyright 2015 South Bend Tribune
All Rights Reserved