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r give to the candidates. It states that they would like one protest per page. It asks the candidate for the question number, what the test company answer is, what their answer is, and what page it was taken from. They then prepare a very detailed report for the commissioners, including the difficulty level of the questions, in other words, how many people answered correctly and how many answered incorrectly. They provide a copy of the reference material and a recommendation and discussion from the company. This is just for the protests. They believe the commission should be able to rule on the protests by having a lot of information available to support their point. After the exam is graded, they will do the assessment. They do a minimum of three exercises. They have trained assessors who are fire personnel from other jurisdictions. For the assessment center, they like to come in and do a pre- test orientation. It takes approximately '/2 hour to an hour. They explain to the candidates what it is that they will do for the test. They do this to level the playing field because they feel that sometimes there are candidates who are aware of assessment centers or have taken assessments, and other people have not. They come in and tell a little about the history of the assessment center and potentially which exercises they could have, which dimensions they could have, how to dress and what to expect on the day of the assessment center. That is optional for the candidates. They also want to be careful that they don't have any assessors who would know the candidates or candidates that know the assessors. So, they would like to provide the board with pictures of the assessors that can be posted or that they can show at pre-test orientation to be sure that the candidates don't know them. If that is a problem for the board, they would ask for either pictures of the candidates or the names, but they do want to ensure that the assessors do not know the candidates. They would also like to do a job analysis or at least have a job description from the city. It probably cannot be done because it would be the candidates that are taking the test that would want to participate in the job analysis. A fire chief is essentially the same, they would need to know a few things, but they could go from the job description and prepare the assessment. They generally have a minimum of three exercises. For their assessment center, if they were to have 7 candidates, they would schedule 4 candidates in the morning and hold those candidates. They would have the afternoon candidates arrive before releasing the morning candidates. They don't want to have any contamination or anyone saying something about the questions, so they keep everyone there. They do not have them complete the exercise and then leave. They explain that in the orientation and why they think it is necessary. She referred to the second page of the packet and pointed out they have suggested some reference material. Mrs. Ramsey indicated she spoke with Mrs. Rote and they talked about some of the materials that are typically used. She said they want to build this test for the city so they would like to use some of our materials. The suggestion was made to use our Civil Service Handbook. They would also typically use our Rules and Regulations book, the union contracts, and medical protocol books if applicable. They would also use some textbooks. The Fire Chief s Handbook is a very large book with a lot of detail. It could be used limited to certain chapters. They could recommend Management in the Fire Service, Incident Management for the Street -Smart Fire Officer, and Fire Command. She pointed out she brought those books with her if anyone wanted to look at the table of contents. She mentioned #5 on the reference list, How to Think Like a CEO. She said some cities are beginning to think that their fire chief should be more of a manager. Typically fire chiefs are dealing with personnel problems, and budget issues. Some cities have chosen this book or have used Leadership Challenge. They have also included their bibliography, all the books they have typically used to prepare fire exams. The city can choose the ones it wants to use. She does not know if we have a library. They have provided a list of where the books come from and how much they cost. In many cities, they will just prepare a list of 6-10 books and put the information out there and let the candidates get the books on their own. She said she is under the impression that the city provides the books. Mrs. Rote pointed out that past practice has been that they put a set of books at each fire station. She confirmed there are two stations. Mrs. Ramsey asked if a list of where the books can be obtained is posted. She said it makes things easier if that is done. Mrs. Rote indicated they can do that. Mrs. Ramsey said that they would like to call the publishing company for each book selected, before printing the reference list, so they can be certain they have the most current edition. She said they recommend with the assessment and the written 2