The Odessa City Council voted 5-2 Tuesday night to immediately provide raises to Odessa’s emergency dispatchers and fire and police personnel using American Rescue Plan Act money. The council approved the raises based on numbers put together by District 1 City Council member Mark Matta, who acknowledged he didn’t run them past Assistant City Manager of Administrative Services Cindy Muncy, who is a certified public accountant and who handles the city budget.
Matta told his colleagues he believes ARPA funding will cover the raises for two years and the total cost will be $2.9 million a year.
Matta told his colleagues he used numbers from Evergreen Solutions’ city-wide compensation study and “I just took the time to go in there and do the homework.” Evergreen Solutions was scheduled to deliver their final report last week during the council work session that was cancelled due to the lack of a quorum.
As a result of the vote, firefighters will receive 8 to 20% raises, depending on their position within the department, Matta said. Dispatchers and police personnel will now be paid commiserate with the top 66% of their colleagues in peer cities, but Matta did not break down the percentages per position.
Odessa Fire Rescue has lost more than 70 employees over the last two years, but At-Large City Council member Denise Swanner said the number is more than 180 over the last four years.
OFR has been “bleeding” firefighters and it needs to stop, Swanner said. She said she and others asked OFR Chief John Alvarez and Michael Marrero how they could help address the situation back in June only to learn an OFR compensation had already been done in 2019.
“Which made me and Councilman Matta look like a fool,” Swanner said.
After the meeting, Council member Steve Thompson said Marrero told all of the council members about the 2019 OFR compensation study in February of this year.
A December 2019 Odessa American story detailed that the city council met with retiring OFR Chief John Alvarez during a work session about that salary survey.
Alvarez announced he is retiring after 30 years with the city last week and Marrero was fired by a 5-2 vote earlier Tuesday night.
Swanner continued, “As it progressed, city staff and the association came to us. They say we micromanage. I didn’t micromanage at all. I’m a leader and when somebody comes to me and asked me to help them with a situation that’s what you guys voted me to do.”
New District 5 council member Chris Hanie said the raises needed to be approved immediately. “Enough’s enough,” he said.
District 2 council member Steve Thompson expressed his displeasure the rest of the council was just “walking away” from a study the council spent $111,500 on without addressing the needs of other city employees.
Thompson also reiterated his past concerns the council has no idea how it will continue paying for the raises going forward and asked if Matta was OK raising property taxes. Matta’s idea doesn’t address the issue of compression, the phenomenon that results in newer employees getting paid more than long-term employees, Thompson said.
The council voted in July to hire Evergreen Solutions because the study was three years old and did not include other city employees, he said.
During the meeting Matta said he used Evergreen Solutions’ study in coming up with his plan. Both he and Swanner said the council has time to figure out how to pay for the raises in the future.
“You may not have to raise property taxes, but that’s a great thing to say whenever you want to scare people,” Matta said.
“I’m not trying to scare anybody, I’m asking a simple question,” Thompson said.
“It’ll be paid. It’ll be paid,” Matta responded.
“I’m done,” Thompson said.
Muncy declined to answer questions following the meeting.
In other action, the council voted 6-1 to declare Odessa a sanctuary city for the unborn. It was a second and final vote on the ordinance. Thompson again voted against the measure both times. District 3 Council member Gilbert Vasquez abstained from the vote last time, but voted in favor Tuesday. Thompson has said he believes the ordinance is redundant because Gov. Greg Abbott has already declared the state a sanctuary state. Thompson has also said he doesn’t want to impose his religious views on others.
The ordinance makes it illegal for anyone to “aid or abet” a woman in obtaining an abortion by driving them to an abortion provider, giving instructions on how to self-administer an abortion, giving them money to pay for the procedure or coercing them into getting an abortion. It also makes it illegal for any doctors to perform the procedure. In either case, the offenders won’t risk criminal charges, instead they can be sued civilly.
The vast majority of citizens who spoke on the measure were in favor, with several sharing personal stories of loss, arguing the unborn are not just a cluster of cells, but babies. They also argued the ordinance is not redundant because efforts are underway at the federal level to codify Roe v. Wade.
Two women spoke against the ordinance. One noted that if the council were really “pro-life” they’d take measures to address the death penalty, high maternal mortality rates and high suicide rates amongst the LGBTQ population.
Hannah Horick, Ector County Democratic Party Chair, said it is a shame the ordinance doesn’t provide an exception for victims of domestic violence and sexual assault who did not choose to become pregnant. She also said the ordinance violates free speech.
“This ordinance means that you control my speech. You control how I spend my private funds, how I spend my time and for whom I might work with, whom I associate, and that sounds like a violation of the First Amendment to me. And while we may have a caveat, we may have a line in the ordinance that says there are no violations of the First Amendment under this ordinance that scares people. It scares people away from getting health care. It scares people away from speaking with their physicians,” Horick said.
As a private citizen, she’s helped countless people access all kinds of health care, Horick said.
“Nothing about this ordinance, whether it has all of you all’s votes, six of your votes for it and your signature on it Mr. Mayor, it will never stop me. I will keep advocating for health care. I will keep donating to these organizations and there is nothing a piece of paper can do to stop me,” Horick said.
