The fire Civil Service Board met this week to discuss testing for the Fire Department. The department tests regularly after a list of candidates has run out of has been exhausted. The EMS list has been exhausted with the hiring of the last candidate to replace a current paramedic who resigned recently, another candidate will begin soon to replace a member of the department who passed away in April. The process for compiling a new list of Paramedic candidates will begin soon.
A new firefighter list is also being discussed. Although the current list has not been exhausted, a recent court ruling has deemed the list of potential candidates null and void.
The city was taken to court by the NAACP for failure to effectively recruit minorities to take the job of firefighter and for not properly advertising the application process. The ruling stated that the current list would be thrown out but an agreement was reached to allow ten candidates to be hire off the list due to the fact that the department was becoming understaffed because of retirements. The Fire Department hired ten firefighter candidates at the end of June, they are in the beginning of a six month training period, see Firefighter Class of 2007
Although the board met this week, the process for the firefighter list can take many months to complete. There are many steps involved including advertising for applicants, written testing, physical agility testing and tabulation of the final scoring to determine a candidates position on the list, which then must be certified by the board, more information is on our Careers in the RFD page
We will advertise important aspects of both testings as information becomes available and the notification will be listed in the help wanted section of the Reading Eagle.
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