Board of Aldermen 6-23-2020 Page 37
President Wilshire
Anyone else? Alderman Lopez?
Alderman Lopez
| had my hand up. So | had a question for CFO Griffin if he’s still here. | was just wondering, | am getting a
little bit confused by the 1% raise versus the 14% raise, versus the based on the individuals who are going
to individually receive more but collectively it is 1%. So | just wanted to ask CFO Griffin, the impact to the
overall budget of the firefighters. We are looking at an overall firefighters compensation increase of 14% on
paper but 17% in live reality. Am | getting even close to this right?
Mr. Griffin
Maybe | can help out. The way we have done cost historically is a year. | Know when my predecessor
Mike Gilbar was here in ’08, ’09, 10, they toyed with cumulative impacts. But if you look at the bottom of
the cost sheet, you have that and you take the compensation per fire fighter and it is an average. It takes
all of the fire fighters in the bargaining unit and divides into total compensation you get a number, that’s the
base year. You look down to the fourth year and that number you subtract the base number and divide by a
base that’s where you get the 17%.
Now as far as the numbers in the unit, they get step increases based on years of service. They get other
things. But predominantly there’s the base costs and then there’s other salary cost and then there’s
retirement which is predominantly NH Retirement System and then there’s the benefits.
Alderman Lopez
| just have one other question too if you don’t mind because you might happen to know. Before it was
referenced, Alderman Jette did some research on comparing the firefighter’s fee or compensation rates to
other ones in New Hampshire, | don’t really have anything to doubt him. But is the goal that they are trying
to reach equality with the Police Department and how does their compensation levels compare? Are the
Police compensated more?
Mr. Griffin
| mean if you take, the range of difference that | see is the Police Department has two uniform officer
bargaining units. The Fire Department, on the other hand, all the members are in the same bargaining unit.
But I’ve never done an analysis dividing salaries by headcount and comparing that to Manchester or
Portsmouth. I’m not sure of the analysis that Alderman Jette had performed. But | had never done an
analysis like that.
Alderman Lopez
Ok it was worth a try.
Mr. Griffin
You have different ranks, on the Fire Department you have new hires; Police Department you have new
hires and there are different ranks and so forth. The bargaining has taken place over decades and it’s hard
to compare.
