Fire Chief Seeks Funds for Bias Study : Minorities: The Board of Supervisors will be asked to approve $54,400 for interviews and suggestions on ending racial tension.

Ventura County fire officials are seeking approval for a study that would examine racial tension in the Fire Department and offer suggestions for ending it--a move that some minority firefighters say is long overdue.

“It’s about time,” said Capt. Charles Merricks, the highest-ranking black in the Fire Department. “Frankly, the black firefighters are a little frustrated with the lack of progress and communication on this issue.”

Fire Chief George Lund will ask the Board of Supervisors on Tuesday to approve a $54,400 contract with Kenneth Hawkins & Associates, a Vacaville firm that will conduct the study.

Information gathered in interviews with Fire Department employees will be used to develop a race sensitivity training program for the department’s managers and cultural-awareness seminars for all personnel, Deputy Fire Chief Bob Holaway said.

The action comes 15 months after minority firefighters asked the supervisors to appoint an affirmative-action officer to address why the department has failed to meet minority-hiring goals set in 1986. Although no formal complaints have been filed, Merricks said minorities are also concerned that they are being passed over for promotions and that supervisors overlook racially discriminatory language and actions.

Supervisor John Flynn, who has complained in the past that minorities were being passed over for hiring within the county’s fire and sheriff’s forces, nonetheless criticized the study as a waste of money. He said the Fire Department, made up predominantly of white males, could ease racial tensions simply by recruiting more minorities.

“They can do the job without that study, simply by opening up their hiring practices,” Flynn said. “They should spend the $57,000 to hire a person of color to be a firefighter.”

But Holaway defended the expenditure, saying the assessment is necessary to identify the immediate concerns of minorities. He said that if blacks, Latinos and Asians leave their jobs because they are unhappy, it will end up costing the department more to recruit others. Holaway also rejected the idea of the study being conducted by internal personnel.

“We need people to go out and gather information and put it into a usable format. That is not our expertise,” Holaway said.

Minority firefighters first made their concerns public in March, 1991. Several firefighters joined a group of black sheriff’s deputies in asking supervisors to hire an affirmative-action officer, preferably a minority, devoted entirely to the two departments.

Since then, the Fire Department has reactivated a minority relations task force but has done little else to try to meet its affirmative-action hiring goals and address concerns about promotions, Merricks said.

Of the county’s 380 firefighters, nine, or 2.4%, are black, according to 1991 figures. There are more than 30 Latino firefighters, or 7.9%; three Asian-Americans, or 0.8%, and one American Indian, or 0.3%, officials said.

The Fire Department’s affirmative action plan set goals of 6.6% blacks, 20.8% Latinos, 4.6% Asian-Americans and 0.8% American Indians.

Blacks make up 2.2% of the county’s population, Latinos, 26.5%, Asian-Americans, 4.9%, and American Indians 0.5%, according to census figures.

Merricks said he believes that he was not considered for a slot as battalion chief late last year while people with less experience were allowed to take the necessary exam. When he asked his supervisors why, “I was told that the education and experience were not there,” Merricks said.

Holaway denied that blacks and other minorities are deliberately passed over for promotions in the Fire Department. However, he said, the exams that firefighters must take to be considered for promotion may be “culturally biased toward the white male.”

A clinical psychologist is in the process of reviewing the exams to make sure that they are not racially biased, Holaway said.

If approved by supervisors, the study will identify specific concerns not only of minorities but of whites within the department, Holaway said. “When minorities raise the issue of not having enough positions, what that means to the white male is that there will be less jobs for him.”

The resulting program will attempt to bridge those differing viewpoints so there is less resentment, Holaway said. The company will also train department administrators in sensitivity courses and will supply a mediator who will attempt to work out differences among the races.

Merricks said minorities on the firefighting force support the idea of the study because it may help resolve conflicts.

“As it is now, we feel we have nowhere to go,” he said. “We feel the administration has in the past shown a lack of sensitivity and a lack of will to meet the affirmative action goals.”