Salinas Firefighters get raise, avoid aribitration

Firefighters in Salinas are getting a pay hike, but not everyone is happy about it. The Salinas City Council approved that agreement Tuesday night, but not without some controversy.

The battle over the agreement went on for many months. But Tuesday night, Salinas Firefighters received a pay hike they say is long overdue.

At Tuesday night’s Salinas City Council meeting, the council approved an agreement with the local firefighters union that will give the 80-some members a raise for a total of just under three-million, three-hundred thousand dollars over a period of a year and a half. Firefighters say they haven’t received a raise in far too long, and even took a pay cut during the recession a decade ago to save other city jobs. They say it’s a step in the right direction in recruiting and keeping new firefighters.

“The men and women of the Salinas Fire Department, of whom I couldn’t be more proud to represent, are stepping up every day and working unGodly amounts of overtime, because the amount of service that it requires to serve this city. The population, the call volume, the fires, the accidents, the medical calls…all those calls require people to be here. And the men and women of the Salinas Fire Department are here rather than having their days off to maintain that service,” said Salinas Firefighter’s Association President Josh Hostetter.

Salinas’ City Manager says as much as they want the best services in the city, the raise wasn’t planned for.

“The added cost here just adds to the overall challenge in the budget for the upcoming fiscal year. So we’re just going to have to manage and do the best we can looking at maybe rolling back some services, maybe rolling back some programs so it could be a combination of both. So that’s a significant amount of dollars that needs to be addressed,” said Salinas City Manager Ray Corpuz.

An attorney counciling the Salinas City Council believes the city budget will need to adjust greatly to accommodate the raise.

Salinas Firefighters say offering competitive rates while getting adequate rest will be the only way to keep employees happy and healthy while preventing them from looking elsewhere. both sides say a big reason an agreement was reached last night is to avoid arbitration, which would have been costly for both sides.