“My goal is to have both a police and fire department that is reflective of the community,” Houston said. “In my mind, the way you’re going to make that happen is 25 percent of our hires should be minorities until we have a representation that reflects the community.” [ See “City seeking minority police recruits,” Aug. 2011.] But wait – did I miss something? Didn’t the fire department just hire 20 new firefighters with a federal SAFER grant? Of those, we learned at the budget hearing that the Springfield Fire Department hired one African-American and one female. Hardly the 25 percent promised by first candidate and then Mayor Houston. This brings the fire department to a grand total of 212 white males, four African-American males, two Hispanic males, one Asian male and eight females. That’s 97 percent white and 96.5 percent male!

To be fair, Mayor Houston promised to meet the 15 percent goal for police and fire over two years. He has a little over one more year to fulfill that promise.

Sheila Stocks-Smith of Springfield, who ran for mayor in last April’s election, is a special projects consultant and adjunct professor at UIS, teaching a class on public policy.