Impatient that the City of Odessa still hasn’t received the results of a compensation study for first responders, Councilmembers Denise Swanner and Mark Matta pushed to give members of the Odessa Fire Rescue immediate raises Tuesday night, but the motion failed 4-3.
All seven members of the city council voted July 26 to hire an outside firm to look at how all city employees are paid in comparison to other municipalities before discussing potential raises. The council also agreed the firm should give priority to studying the OFR, the Odessa Police Department and emergency dispatchers.
The decision was made after firefighters filled the council chambers multiple times, pleading for help and blaming low pay for the departure of 35 employees last year and the department’s seeming inability to attract new firefighters.
Tuesday night it was announced the department is on track to lose even more this year. Thirty have left so far and 13 of them have left since the outside firm was hired.
With firefighters again filling the council chambers, Swanner told her fellow councilmembers she thought it was their duty to “stop the bleeding.”
Swanner made a motion to raise new firefighters’ starting salary by 22% to $65,823; to give captains a 15% raise, division captains a 12% increase and battalion chiefs an 8% raise. The total cost could be covered by the city’s American Rescue Plan Act money, she said.
ARPA funds are not a recurring annual fund.
“I don’t believe in waiting on the study, we’re losing guys right and left and we need to do something about it,” Swanner said.
After learning the outside consultant is expected to offer its recommendation on Oct. 11, Councilmembers Detra White, Tom Sprawls, Mari Willis and Steve Thompson voted against Swanner’s motion, which was seconded by Matta and got Mayor Javier Joven’s vote.
During the hour-long discussion prior to the vote, OFR Chief John Alvarez listed each of the reasons the 30 firefighters gave for leaving and eight definitively said it was due to pay.
The chief said he absolutely agrees his crews need raises, but he railed against the “false narrative” that is being spread that the department has morale issues and that he doesn’t support his staff. While there may be “small pockets” of low morale, he’s not heard about it, he said.
“There’s a narrative that’s being pushed out there that there’s a morale issue and after you say it a few times people are probably going to believe that,” Alvarez said. “Do they want a raise? Absolutely they want a raise and I know that’s what’s been their biggest issue. I’ve explained to you what I’ve done as a fire chief. I’ve been ridiculed on OAP (Odessa Accountability Project). False information has been thrown out there. I mean, my God, I’ve been put on Facebook on the OAP as Pinocchio and you know what? I don’t appreciate that.”
Alvarez also said something else is stirring up the department.
“It’s the slander and the attacks on this administration that’s what’s causing this. People are seeing us being attacked. You’re attacking our department. Whether you think you’re doing the right thing or not, that’s where our problems begin,” Alvarez said.
Just days away from celebrating his 30-year anniversary with the department, Alvarez said he has a”huge problem” seeing how things are being run.
Specifically, Alvarez said members of the OFR association have been meeting with council members without involving OFR leadership or City Manager Michael Marrero.
“I’m telling you, to me it’s embarrassing. I have this entire department back here standing here begging for a raise here. You know, there’s different ways of doing things,” Alvarez said.
Alvarez said he was asked by a member of the OFR association whose side he was on, Marrero’s or the department’s. He said the question made as much sense as asking someone to choose between their wife and their children.
Joven asked Alvarez what his response was, prompting Willis to tell Alvarez he didn’t have to answer.
Alvarez said it was a “dangerous” question, but he said he works for Marrero and the department.
“But when I’m being sidestepped about this pay, as a leader, that’s a problem,” Alvarez said.
It’s also a problem that OFR was on the council’s agenda and yet no one told him what it was about, he said.
White agreed with Alvarez that Swanner and Matta should not have met with members of the OFR association, prompting Swanner to interrupt and say, “If they, in my opinion, if things had been done properly, the association would never have come to us to begin with and they were constituents so I addressed it. I have a duty to this council and a duty to the women and men that protect our city.”
White said she understands Swanner’s point of view, but noted she’s never “addressed any of this stuff…”
“I don’t believe I owe it to you,” Swanner said, interrupting her again.
White went on to note the city council agreed to wait for the consultant’s report before addressing compensation. She pointed out dispatchers have also made a passionate plea for raises.
“But guess what? We’ve got everyone in this city and they are your constituents, too,” White said. “We’ve got everyone in the city and we’re not going around behind their backs, or behind Michael’s back and meeting with different groups and agencies trying to back door something as critical as this.”
Swanner said if they were trying to “back door” something they wouldn’t be having the discussion.
White said the decision on raises is a business one and the city has to find the money somewhere. There are people in the city wondering if the OFR is going to get a 22% raise while they get nothing, she said.
Matta pointed out the city recently opened a new fire station and agreed to spend $3.2 million on new fire engines and a ladder truck. He asked what good those things will do residents if there aren’t any firefighters left to staff the station or operate the trucks.
Thompson sided with White, saying personnel issues ought to be settled between OFR’s leadership and Marrero.
Sprawls questioned why the matter was being brought up again after a decision was made to wait back in July and Willis pointed out the police department and dispatchers are equally important and yet they’ve not reached out to Swanner and Matta.
“I think this is totally out of place, uncalled for. It’s just a classic example of micromanagement,” Thompson said.
Following the vote, Thompson said “We’re setting a terrible precedent here tonight on how we run the City of Odessa. It’s very scary. Next time I come here, we’ll have all of the police department here. The next meeting we’ll have all of the administration. The next meeting we’ll have the whole sanitation department and the next, we’ll have the whole water department up here. This is not the way to run a business.”
OFR Firefighter/Paramedic Nick Sharp reminded the council of what they’ve been told before, firefighters are leaving the department for other municipalities that pay more, including Pecos, Lubbock and Reeves County. He spoke of a 14-year veteran who just left the department in tears because he felt unappreciated and was having suicidal thoughts.
OFR Firefighter/Paramedic Josh Herron said thanks to current staffing levels, essentially one firefighter is responsible for covering the equivalent of 15 square miles and it’s only going to get worse.
“Are we going to get to the point where we have to drop staffing, brown out stations? How do you choose which station you’re going to brown out? Which neighborhood is more important and which neighborhood is less important?” Herron said. “How do we do that? How do we look 175,000 people in the face and say, ‘Your neighborhood is not important?’”
The OFR association wasn’t organized when he reached out to Matta and Swanner and he found it “hurtful” when Alvarez accused him of sidestepping.
“I was concerned. I simply asked, ‘What can we do to help our fire department stop bleeding’ and this is where we are. So by no means was I trying to sidestep anybody or overstep any boundaries or do anything negative, to make a negative impact or negative image on this fire department,” Herron said.
Councilmember-elect Chris Hanie told the council there shouldn’t even be an argument, they should give the firefighters raises immediately.
Odessa Development Corporation board member Kris Crow said his conversations with firefighters have been in “stark contrast” with the conversations Alvarez described to the council. He insisted there are morale issues within OFR and he said he has yet to attend a meeting or read minutes where OFR “brass” brought up raises.
“So Mr. Thompson, to answer your question, when your direct supervisors don’t do anything, you have got to have a way to go around them and get your questions answered,” Crow said.
Crow asked the council how many firefighters could be funded with the $1 million being spent on a public art project by the city.
“We’ve got to get our priorities right. We’ve got to get back to the infrastructure, police officers, firefighters, roads, water. Parks are nice. I love parks, that’s great, but you know what? I’d rather dial 911 and have somebody answer and be there on the other end,” Crow said.
Following the meeting, White said she believes Swanner, Matta and Joven were using the firefighters as pawns in some sort of a political game.
“If this was a really sincere effort to get this through why do they meet secretly? They sent us nothing, nothing to look at or to take into consideration. They don’t involve staff to see what we could really do, financially,” White said.
Any pay increases would not be just a one-time deal, the city would have to be able to sustain them going forward, White said. The ARPA funding mentioned by Swanner during the meeting as a way to fund raises is not an annual fund.
White, who spent 23 years as a fire marshal within the OFR, has taken the whole thing personally.
“It’s my department…looking at their faces they were so mad because there was such an expectation that this was going to be done last night,” White said. “Denise, Mark and Javier concocted this thing, but they were the only ones, the only ones that knew what was going to be presented. I just feel like they’re playing a political game and they’re using those firefighters as pawns.”
White said she wants the firefighters to know they are appreciated, but the council has to look at the big picture and take into consideration all city employees, including those on the lower end of the pay scale who may be struggling to put food on the table. The council has to worry about compression, too. They can’t have newer employees making more than their supervisors, which is another reason city staff has to be brought into the discussion, she said.
“I made it home before I started to cry because they were taking my department from me and turning those men and women against me when I would give anything for them, but I will do the right thing,” White said.
