Firefighters’ raises will cost city $692K
KINGSTON, N.Y. » Salary increases in the new threeyear contract for Kingston firefighters will cost taxpayers about $692,000, according to City Hall.
The contract, approved last week by Kingston Professional Firefighters Association, Local 461, next goes to the Common Council’s Finance and Audit Committee and then to the full council.
Firefighters’ union President Bryan Cafaldo said union members “overwhelmingly” ratified the pact.
The deal, retroactive to the beginning of 2017, gives firefighters salary increases of 2 percent per year for 2017, 2018 and 2019. That’s roughly the current rate of U.S. inflation.
Megan Weiss-Rowe, the city’s director for communication and community engagement, said an entrylevel firefighter who earned
$44,747 in 2016 will make $45,642 in 2017, $46,555 in 2018 and $47,486 in 2019.
A top-level firefighter who made $60,838 in 2016 will earn $62,055 in 2017, $63,296 in 2018 and $64,562 in 2019, WeissRowe said.
The city’s total cost for
the raises will be $692,350, she said.
City Comptroller John Tuey said Wednesday that the money for the 2017 and 2018 raises will come from the city’s contingency fund and that the 2019 raises will be included in next year’s city budget.
The new contract calls for union members to continue contributing 10 percent, up to a maximum of $3,000, toward the cost of their health insurance, Mayor Steve Noble said last week.
Noble called the new contract “appropriate and fair
to both parties.”
The union’s last contract, a five-year deal, expired at the end of 2016. Negotiations for the new one began last summer.
The Kingston Professional Firefighters Association represents 52 members of the Kingston Fire
Department.
The city’s two other public employee unions, the Police Benevolent Association and the Civil Service Employees Association, also have been without contracts since the end of 2016 and are seeking new deals.