Firefighters, city reach tentative pay agreement

Talks between police, officials will continue

Firefighters have reached a tentative pay-raise agreement with the city of Texarkana, Ark., but talks between officials and police are ongoing.

City Manager Kenny Haskin and representatives of the Texarkana, Ark., Fire Department this week negotiated a solution to their dispute over a planned pay increase, said TAFD Capt. Jeff Pritchett, president of the local firefighters’ union.

The process of gaining department approval for the deal has begun, and firefighters’ initial response is “positive,” he said Friday. The city Board of Directors also must OK the agreement, and Pritchett is hopeful the board will take action at its next meeting on Dec. 19.

The Texarkana, Ark., Police Department’s discussions with the city continue, Chief Bob Harrison said.

The talks come amid the latest disagreement over so-called “pay parity,” a contentious issue in the city for the past 20 years.

Arkansas-side voters in 1996 approved a pair of quarter-cent sales taxes to fund keeping police officers’ and firefighters’ pay competitive with their counterparts’ across the state line. Prompted by a recent pay increase for Texas-side city employees, Arkansas-side officials planned a parity raise to take effect next month. But citing insufficient revenue to pay for it, the board voted Nov. 21 to delay the raise six months, issuing half in July 2017 and half in January 2018.

Both police and firefighters have objected to the delay, saying that it circumvents the will of the voters and that parity-pay tax revenues, coupled with department budget cuts, should be sufficient to fund the raises right away.

Pritchett declined to reveal the deal’s terms, but he said they “mirrored” those spelled out in City Ordinance

No. L-236. That 2005 measure defines pay-parity rules, including what the city must do when tax revenues are insufficient to fund parity raises. In that case, the ordinance dictates, firefighters get an increase of 3 or 4 percent, depending on the amount of the city’s unappropriated fund balance.

“We’re making a concession, but it’s a path forward,” he said. “It’s a pretty fair deal in the short term. … It still doesn’t meet parity, but it’s a step forward.”

Seeing that attempts to resolve the issue had come to an impasse, Pritchett approached Haskin to restart a dialogue. Later, TAFD Chief David Fletcher became involved in the discussions,

Pritchett said.

“I’m very, very optimistic,” Haskin said, declining further comment until he could fully brief Mayor Ruth Penney-Bell and the Board of Directors regarding the developing situation.

At the board’s meeting Monday, Harrison floated the possibility of initiating a special election to resolve the dispute.

“I’ve got a proposal for you to consider … We’ll go back to the voters to reaffirm parity, number one … number two, to define parity, exactly what it is … and number three, that the money would go in a trust account within the city and could not be used for anything but base-pay parity,” he said.