The Amarillo City Council had a lengthy discussion Tuesday at its regular meeting about better compensation for its police and fire departments and its impact on the city’s budget.

Deputy City Manager Andrew Freeman presented the council with options to give both agencies a more favorable agreement, with both the firefighter and police union contracts set to expire Sept. 30 of this year. Both unions are asking for better wages and benefits that align with other departments of Amarillo’s size. The issue is losing current and future employees to other departments that offer better compensation.

Todd Peden, president of the Amarillo firefighter’s union, discussed the council discussion.

“I think we are in a good place to start these negotiations and go where we are going,” Peden said. “I think the council will look at some hard, fast ways to get us where we need to be. If we want to be the best in public safety, we can and follow all our mission statements; it is just one of those things that we must do better on the pay side. We are just too far below the state average to be able to continue to do that. We cannot maintain retention and recruitment at the rate we are at right now.”

Speaking about the appetite of the taxpayers of the city for these raises, Peden said, “The only way we can lure people here is to increase the pay. We have a great department with great apparatus and fire stations. We are moving forward in a lot of directions. Our guys work great together and are aggressive in fighting fires, but keeping people here and enticing others to join the department from other locations is hard. We are to the point where we are running out of people from this area that want to join.”

Peden stressed that the department staff is not adequate to handle all the tasks needed to service the city in the most viable manner.

“If we do not make some drastic changes right now in relation to how our pay trails other areas in the state, it’s going to be more difficult in the future,” Peden said.

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Toby Hudson, president of the Amarillo Police Officer’s Association, weighed in on the discussions with the city.

“I think the council supports public safety and ran on that platform,” Hudson said. “They wanted to change the way the budget works so that they take care of the city’s needs, such as public safety, roads, and infrastructure. That was their intent when they got on, and I think they are following through with that. I feel good about how they are listening, offering different solutions, and what they want to do moving forward.”

Hudson said recruiting police officers nationwide has been an issue due to multiple factors, such as reducing the pool of officers and making recruiting ultra-competitive.

“It’s harder to get a number of recruits and even harder to get quality recruits who can pass background checks and other requirements, which makes their numbers smaller and smaller,” Hudson added.

When asked how to get public support for increased department compensation, Hudson said that the city’s citizens have always supported public safety.

“I have always been thankful for that support, but that support doesn’t necessarily pay the bills. And so when you are recruiting nationally, young people look at the bottom line of what the pay is,” he said. “Amarillo is well behind the Texas, regional, and national average of what cities our size pay police officers. So, when you are fighting for those recruits, every dollar matters.”

Amarillo Mayor Cole Stanley discussed the council’s discussion of improved pay and benefits for fire and police personnel.

“I am pretty optimistic in how these sides came to the table to negotiate in good faith without their lawyer present in a public meeting,” Stanley said. “I think it comes back to a good organization that wants to do what is best for its members. Overall, it’s a large amount of money, but I think we have identified at least half of it, and I am hopeful we can go through on a good hard budget look and identify more money.”

Stanley addressed the wage disparity with Amarillo and other cities for public safety personnel.

“In other ways, there are other taxing entities that maybe they do not have in other areas like a community college or overlapping services, and so it’s not totally fair to look at Amarillo as a standalone,” Stanley said. “We are really a lighthouse out here all by ourselves, so not only do we have to service everything in the city limits, but in a lot of ways, we serve multiple counties around us, being a key stakeholder for 26 counties in the Texas Panhandle.”

Stanley said the city is forced to do more with less money than other areas.

“I think you see how far we lag behind when it comes to public safety and trying to get our people up to a good rate,” Stanley said.

Stanley emphasized that the city has some other creative ideas about how the general fleet is managed for public safety that could free up money in the general fund.

“The bottom line right now is we are running a half-billion-dollar a-year budget, and we are talking about hopefully $10 million when all is said and done,” he said. “That’s a small percentage of that overall budget, and it is our number one priority, so I think we are going to work as hard as we can to get as close as we can to where they need us to be. I believe everyone will accept where we end up.”

This article originally appeared on Amarillo Globe-News: Amarillo City Council looks at pay, benefits for fire, police depts.