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Report to the City Council on Affirmative Action Training At the request of the City Manager, the Human Rights Commission undertook to find and to recommend to the City Council an affirmative action trainer for the City depart- ment heads, in order to carry out the Council's order of October, 1979 that such training be given to them. The Human Rights Commission was motivated by a desire to help the City of New Brighton carry out the purposes of its AA/EEO plan by addressing, at whatever level the problems appeared to exist, the failure heretofore of the plan to have an impact on the City's employment and retention of minorities and other protected class citizens. It soon became apparent that trainers having some familiarity with municipal government problems were not easy to find. Neither local colleges, state, nor federal government agencies offered courses or trainers which took a reasonable amount of time, cost a reasonable sum, or dealt with New Brighton as a specific case and its department heads as individuals. The Human Rights Commission's subcommittee on Affirmative Action and Equal Employment Opportunity came up with the names of several private companies in the metropolitan area who offer AA/EEO training. These were asked to provide us with information on the form of training which they offered. From those who sent us materials to evaluate, Geri Evans, John Grau, and I, Ron Kastner, interviewed the representative of BTW Associates, Inc. When analyzing the proposal of this company, as well as the others who responded to our inquiries, the subcommittee looked at two areas of the proposal particularly closely. The first of these was the applicability of the training to the situation of New Brighton and to those individuals receiving the training. The second was the specific content and the context of the material's presentation. (The sub- committee was flexible on the latter, but had certain ideas connected to the Human Rights Commission's desire, as mentioned previously, to help the City attain a better AA/EEO profile. The proposal of BTW Associates, Inc. was judged to best meet the City's needs as perceived by the Human Rights Commission: I. Human Relations Personal/Retention - How to assess what the law states. - How to assess the impact on the work environment. - How to give feedback and performance appraisals. - How to uniformly apply policy. - How to terminate. - How to minimize turnover.