Mayor Keith Gaskin cast the tie-breaking vote Thursday on a last-minute budget change to raise pay for Columbus Fire and Rescue captains by an additional $1 an hour.
Firefighters packed the public reception room at City Hall and others spilled into the hallway for the vote, which set the captains’ hourly pay rate at $16.50 instead of the $15.50 the city’s proposed budget included.
CFR Chief Duane Hughes had asked for the last-minute change, and Chief Financial Officer Jammie Garrett told council members that the funds were available in the city’s budget without needing to increase taxes.
A pay increase for captains was already included in the proposed budget, but Hughes requested a larger one to make the position more competitive. Most promotions at CFR come with a $2 an hour increase, he said, but the step from engineer to captain would only have been 87 cents.
“The pay increase provides an extra incentive to become a captain,” Hughes said. “… If you look just in the area for firefighters, I have a problem now with firefighters leaving the department and going to Tuscaloosa and Northport where their salary almost doubles. With the news getting around about the pay raise, I’ve had former employees tell me they’re going to reapply.”
There had been discussion of delaying a vote on the new request, but Ward 4 Councilman Pierre Beard pushed it forward.
“We’re going to discuss it right now,” Beard said. “Half of them are here and not at work. Regardless, we’re going to figure it out.”
Beard, Ward 3 Councilman Rusty Greene and Ward 6 Councilwoman Jacqueline DiCicco voted in favor of the $16.50 per hour rate for fire captains, and Ward 1 Councilwoman Ethel Stewart, Ward 2 Councilman Joseph Mickens and Ward 5 Councilman Stephen Jones opposed.
When Gaskin broke the tie in favor, the firefighters present erupted into applause.
Jones told The Dispatch he voted against the pay raise because even $1 an hour adds up.
“It wasn’t so much as a vote against the fire department. It was just the cost of all the raises that we’ve given,” Jones said. “On paper it looks like a dollar, but we all know it’s more than a dollar with the way firefighters work. They have that built-in overtime, so $1 for 16 firefighters will be about $87,000. That doesn’t include overtime.”
Tax levy, budget approval
Overall, the city’s requested budget of $24,873,300 and the Columbus Municipal School District’s request by the city for $14,559,626 from local ad valorem taxes plus was adopted by the council in a 4-2 vote, with Greene and DiCicco voting against the measure.
The city’s budget request will not raise taxes, but the school district’s request will raise the millage by 4.17 mills.
Each year, the city council approves CMSD’s ad valorem tax allotment, collected from property owners based on their property’s assessed value. The district asks for a certain amount of money, and the city sets the number of mills, or the tax rate, necessary to collect it.
The total millage for the city and school district comes out to 121.19 mills.
The council voted unanimously to accept the tax levy.
A mill is used to measure real and personal property taxes. The bump for CMSD will cost taxpayers an additional $41.70 per every $100,000 of assessed property value not covered by Homestead exemption.
The council also unanimously approved fulfilling $25,000 of the Columbus Redevelopment Authority’s request of $55,000 and giving the Columbus-Lowndes Public Library System $11,000 more than its request of $289,000.
During the discussion of the budget, contention rose when Greene and DiCicco voted against increasing the overtime pay allotment to the Parks and Recreation Department. Director Greg Lewis explained he has five full-time employees doing the work of 12, but it is less expensive to pay them overtime than to hire on new employees.
“I have five guys, 120 acres, 13 buildings, and I need more guys,” Lewis said. “To find more guys, I need to find ones who will do the work well. The only way I can keep up is to give (current employees) overtime. It’s a lot less expensive to give them overtime as opposed to hiring some more guys.”
The council approved increasing the overtime pay from $5,000 to $11,000.
Both Greene and DiCicco told The Dispatch they voted against the overall budget because it included raises for elected officials that they also opposed.
Those included a $10,000 raise for the mayor and $8,000 for each councilman. Gaskin, Greene and DiCicco have indicated they do not plan to accept their raises.
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Quality, in-depth journalism is essential to a healthy community. The Dispatch brings you the most complete reporting and insightful commentary in the Golden Triangle, but we need your help to continue our efforts. In the past week, our reporters have posted 44 articles to cdispatch.com. Please consider subscribing to our website for only $2.30 per week to help support local journalism and our community.
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