The Odessa City Council instructed a consulting company Tuesday evening to figure out exactly how much it would cost the city to pay its public safety employees as though it was competing with the top third or top quarter of its peers.
Mark Holcombe, a consultant with Evergreen Solutions, said preliminary numbers suggest the city would have to cough up an extra $2.5 million to $2.75 million a year if the council would like to compete with the top third of public safety agencies and up to $6 million if the council wants to compete with the top quarter.
The city has 504 budgeted firefighters, police officers and dispatchers, accounting for nearly half of the city’s overall budgeted positions of 1,085, Assistant City Manager of Administrative Services Cindy Muncy said.
No decisions will be made about how competitive the city wants to be with other cities when it comes to the rest of the city’s employees until Evergreen finishes gathering data about that group, said City Manager Michael Marrero.
Holcombe said he expects that to be within the next two or three months.
Muncy told the council Holcombe’s public safety figures do not take into consideration the increased costs the city would have to cover in terms of pensions and other benefits. For example, the city pays 28% of every firefighter’s salary into their pension fund.
Muncy and Marrero said any raises would have to come from excess sales tax revenue. This fiscal year’s sales tax revenue has been projected at $45 million and nearly all of it has already been accounted for, Muncy said.
While councilmember Denise Swanner has suggested $14 million in American Rescue Plan Act funding could pay for a few years’ worth of raises for public safety employees, it’s not clear if the city would be allowed to use ARPA funds for those purposes and even if allowed, they certainly couldn’t be used for regular city employees, Muncy said following the meeting.
Back in July, the council voted unanimously to hire an outside firm to look at all city employees’ pay in comparison with other communities, but asked Evergreen Solutions to place a rush on first responders’ pay because Odessa Fire Rescue is losing firefighters at a rapid rate and some attribute it to poor pay.
In fact, during the council meeting Sept. 27, Mayor Javier Joven, Swanner and council member Mark Matta voted to give OFR raises before getting the results of the Evergreen study. The measure failed by a 4-3 vote.
Swanner said again Tuesday night she was ready to give OFR employees an immediate raise.
“We can spend $10 million out of general funds on a road project, but we can’t give these guys more money. That makes no sense at all,” Swanner said.
Councilmember Mari Willis said she “hates” that the OFR has lost more then 30 firefighters, but the city council must go through a process.
Two weeks ago she was asked to vote for specific raises for OFR employees, but that’s not how it’s done, Willis said. The council has to know where the money is going to come from first and the entire council voted for the Evergreen study, she said.
“Somebody said on the Odessa Accountability Project ‘Did you look them in the face and tell them you want to do more’ and I am looking them in the face and telling them, ‘I get it. I want you to have more. I want you to get what you deserve.’ So the answer to that question, is ‘Yes. I am looking them in the face and yes, I am looking them in the eye.’ I do get it and I do want it, but there has to be a process,” Willis said.
Holcombe told the council his company has collected data on agencies that have already poached OFR members and the fire department is still competing with when it comes to recruitment, Holcombe said. It’s also collected information on agencies that are similar to public safety agencies in terms of services offered, size, budgets and job descriptions.
But, Holcombe said the city council needed to decide if they wanted to offer average pay or be more competitive when it comes to public safety employees and general government employees.
He also asked the council to decide if they want to make changes merely to salaries, but benefits as well.
Holcombe said the city will have to determine at a later point if it wants to change how it implements step increases. Right now, the city provides step increases every two years, but other cities provide step increases every year.
Along with that, Holcombe said the city will need to address the issue of compression, in other words, ensuring newer, less experienced employees don’t end up earning more than experienced, long-term employees.
All of the council members agreed they wanted to see figures as though the city was paying in the top 66th or 75th percentile for first responders.
They also agreed they wanted to keep benefits and supplemental pay at the same rate, which Holcombe said is actually already higher than many cities included in their data collection process.
Evergreen, which was paid $111,500 for the report, provided the council the estimated populations and per capita income for 19 Texas cities and Ector County.
Evergreen will have final cost figures for the city’s public safety employees within two or three weeks, Holcombe said.
In other matters, the city agreed to enter a zero dollar lease agreement with the Black Cultural Council of Odessa for the Gertrude Bruce Historical Cultural Center, 1020 E. Murphy Street. According to city documents, the cultural council will be solely responsible for the building’s maintenance, repair and operation expenses and would have to carry insurance.
The council also met in executive session to discuss the annual evaluations of City Secretary Norma Aguilar-Grimaldo, City Attorney Natasha Brooks and Marrero. The council adjourned for the night after coming out of executive session without taking any action.
