Mayor Eric Adams on Monday signed off on a package of legislation aimed at improving diversity within the ranks of the FDNY. 

The five bills, which the City Council passed earlier this month, will “help build a more inclusive FDNY that is reflective of the millions of New Yorkers we serve,” Adams said in a statement. 

At a City Council hearing in September, FDNY officials said they were struggling to broaden the department’s demographics and address allegations of discrimination within the agency. 

Approximately 74% of the city’s uniformed firefighters are white, while 15% are Hispanic, 9% are Black and 2% are Asian, the FDNY said Monday. Only 144 of the city’s approximately 11,000 firefighters, or around 1.3%, are women, the department said. 

“Our city is changing. Our city is evolving,” Adams said at a bill signing ceremony Monday morning. “And when we allow change to embrace tradition, we make ourselves a better place.” 

The first of the five bills will require the FDNY to focus its recruitment efforts on groups that are underrepresented within the department, the mayor said. 

A second bill will require the agency to survey its firehouses for upgrades that are needed to create environments that are “suitable for a mixed-gender workforce,” Adams said. 

Under a third piece of legislation, the FDNY will have to file a yearly demographics report for each of its firehouses and special operations units that includes gender, race and ethnicity data for residents who live in the fire companies’ “immediate service areas,” he said. 

A fourth bill will require the department to create and implement a diversity and inclusion-focused training and education plan, while a fifth bill will mandate the compilation of a yearly report detailing complaints logged with the department’s Equal Employment Opportunity office, as well as the agency’s responses to those complaints. 

At Monday’s ceremony, FDNY Commissioner Laura Kavanagh praised the bills, saying she believed that “change and tradition can live side by side.” 

“I know that this is an organization that we talk about with tradition, and it certainly has those great traditions. We will always be brave and honorable, but change has also been a fundamental part of our story, and of the city’s story,” said Kavanagh, who became the first woman to lead the FDNY when Adams appointed her commissioner last month.  

“Without change, we would not be here. It is how we have risen from our darkest days,” she added. “We’ve adjusted to the future, and right now, we look forward into a really great future, a new horizon for our city and our department.”