After a year of Negotiations between the City of Tallahassee and our Firefighters they will be going before an arbitrator at the end of this month (March 27, 2024). Many people are asking what the current offers are and how do they compare?
The Arbitrator has been agreed upon by both parties and will take into account varying factors. Some of the factors they may consider is how we compare to other departments of similar size, what the Department’s funding looks like, how much movement each side has made during the process, what other employees have received, and what a fair contract looks like to both parties.
What Other Employees Received
Many people are asking: So what raises did other employees receive?
General employees all received a 5% raise across the board. This includes the City Executives. Reese Goad makes about $273,000 annually and a 5% raise means he will receive an additional $13,600. For comparison, a 6% raise for a firefighter rank would mean only about a $2,700 increase in base salary. This would bring the starting pay up to $47,700 which would only put the firefighter starting pay even with surrounding smaller counties. Tallahassee firefighters base pay really needs to increase by about $7,000 to make our department competitive with departments similar is size and city population.
Tallahassee Police Department received a contract that gave them an average increase (across all ranks) of 13.1% in the first year, 3.74% in the second year, and 3.27% in the third year.
The Budget
Recently the Fire service fee increase for the 2023/2024 budget year (the same year for this contract). The increase in the budget provides the department with $1,801,374. Many people have proposed the question: Where is the money going if not to the personnel?
According to the City’s open budget, an increase of $1,278,385 for the 2023/2024 budget year is being transferred to other funds.
Many people are feeling confused by the City’s actions and question why two other commissioners are continuing to go along with the Mayor and the City Manager’s decision when the impact has harmed our community. Just within the past few weeks the fire department has lost three employees. How many more will leave our City for a different one that pays more and is possibly even smaller than our own?
2 Responses
What am I missing here? The city is offering to cut their pension significantly less than the FF are asking. That’s a huge win for FF
4% vs 6%….. Settle at 5% and move on
This seems kind of ridiculous
This is a really good point for clarification, thank you for asking. So the pension reduction is the amount that the employees have to pay into their pension. So the firefighters are asking to reduce their contributions by 4.25%. The City only wants to reduce it by 2.5%. This affects their take home pay but not their base pay.
The bigger issue here is that the firefighters are asking for fair livable wages. Comparable departments are offering less pension contributions, higher pay, and less hours.