Board of Aldermen 6-23-2020 Page 39
And even if we pass this, that is still going to be the case. The Fire Fighters are not looking to compare
apples to oranges but they are, | think they are pointing that out in a way so that we can understand why
they feel that this is a fair deal for them.
The other thing | would say is that in response to Alderwoman Lu’s comments, you know, | don’t think we
can look and think and compare what everyone else’s cost of living increase is going to be. But! think if we
look at the level of service that the Fire Department has provided for the City, and the increased number of
calls and extra responsibilities that they have taken on over the last 5 years without asking for anything
more and with just agreeing to just a cost of living increase. | have no doubt that they will continue to do
that going forward regardless, because they are professional and that’s who they are. But | just wanted to
clarify that this will not bring parity, it may move pay rates a little bit closer, but the Police Department would
still be paid more than firefighters with comparable years of experience.
Alderman Clemons
Thank you, Madam President. In regards to a comment that was made earlier about throwing fiscal
responsibility to the wind, | just want to state for the record that this is the opposite of that. VWWe know what
the costs are going to be because the contract states them. With the Fire Department, we know how many
employees they have at one given time because there’s a minimum number of employees that they need to
have in order to maintain a fire company. So we can fairly accurately budget this for year to year. The
other thing is the other Departments in the City have a lot of flexibility and a lot of different demands and
needs, so a lot of times they can balance their budgets on the back of vacancies and things like that. It’s
much harder to do with the Fire Department.
| think that it is important that we all understand that we have the cost in front of us. And the fact is, that
this is a retroactive contract if it were to be passed. So it would take care of 2020, we just passed the
Budget for 2021 so we know that those two years would be taken care of. So really the question is, can we
afford it for the outlying years and my thought of that is, yes we can. We have done it before in the past
and we can certainly do it in the future. | would encourage my colleagues to vote yes.
Alderman Klee
Thank you, Madam President. | think a lot has been said about parity and so on and I’ve never been one to
want to compare one person to another so | am going to leave that conversation to others. | do want to
make a comment, please anybody correct me if | am wrong, but in my homework that I’ve been doing, one
of the things that I’ve found which was quite surprising to me was that the firefighters don’t get overtime
until they hit 52 hours, unlike other employees when they hit 40 hours they will get overtime. But for the
firefighters, it’s not until they hit 52 hours.
The other thing is that steps don’t happen every year, they happen every 5 years, and where this is a 4
year contract, there may actually be some people that aren’t going to be getting steps during this time. |
understand where Mr. Griffin is coming with the 17% because he’s very good at his job and I’m sure he’s
calculated that based on the employees that will be getting steps. So | am not to disagree with that; but |
just want that to be known to the public that these are some of the information that we don’t see as part of
the contract that is there.
| also don’t disagree with anything that Alderman Jette said about the other —- Concord, Portsmouth and so
on and that we are above those. | did a superficial and | apologize for not getting more detail when | went to
Concord and talked there, | want to say the Fire Commission but | don’t think that’s what it is. But | asked
them to kind of give me a general feeling as to where Nashua’s payroll was, the equity of pay and so on.
They told us for New Hampshire, we were right down the middle. So | know that’s probably comparing us to
some towns and so on. But | looked at us as being one of the best Fire Departments in the State as far as |
was concermed and yet our pay fell more towards mid-line. They may be higher than what Portsmouth or
Manchester and so on but Manchester is a much bigger — | don’t know the size of Portsmouth or even
Concord. That’s all | wanted to say | think.
