Firefighters, developers share concerns

Groups ask to be involved in pay, impact fee talks

Yuma firefighters and contractors filled the City Council Chambers during the Wednesday meeting, eager to address concerns with a public safety pay plan and impact fees, respectively.

Discussion during Tuesday’s work session sparked the concerns. Bill Kereluk, president of the Yuma chapter of the United Yuma Firefighters’ Association, and six developers and representatives spoke during the Call to the Public on Wednesday.

The firefighters worried that comments made at the work session about a police pay plan seemed to indicate that firefighters are not part of public safety. Kereluk said that they felt “a little betrayed” and that it appeared they were intentionally being left out of the “public safety equation.”

Kereluk said one comment suggests that the fire department does not have a pay step plan, which it does, drafted in early 2016.

Another comment, according to Kereluk, implied that police and fire are too different to have a joint pay plan. He acknowledged that their job functions are very different but in many ways they are similar and can function under a joint pay plan. He said firefighters hoped be invited to the next pay plan discussion.

“We are very much part of public safety,” Kereluk added.

City Administrator Greg Wilkinson explained that the police pay plan came out of the January council retreat at the request of Councilman Edward Thomas. Wilkinson said there was no intention to cut firefighters from the pay plan and said he wished Kereluk would have called him about it.

“There is no pay plan as part of this budget,” Wilkinson said. “Right now at this point there’s nothing being considered in this budget. You are not left out of it. I would not do that.”

During the Tuesday work session, Thomas asked when the council would hear a presentation about the YPD pay plan and said he wanted to hear it before the council got too far into the budget process.

Councilwoman Leslie McClendon then said that if the presentation could cover public safety, not just police, to make sure the fire department was involved.

Wilkinson then noted that the city didn’t have a separate play plan for fire. On Wednesday, he clarified that he momentarily forgot the fire department pay plan drafted in 2016.

Also during the Tuesday work session, Mayor Doug Nicholls explained that YPD had put a pay plan together on its own initiative. “That’s what’s ready to be talked about. It’s not that we’re not open to discussing a fire one, it’s just PD is prepared to go now and it takes a while to put that kind of thing together in order to get it done in two weeks.”

Thomas said he would prefer to hear the plan from YPD and then the council could get another one for public safety. The council then decided to hear the police presentation during the next work session.

On Wednesday, the contractors and developer representatives also requested a work session to discuss proposed impact fees,also known as development fees, noting that they wanted to be involved in the process as early as possible. The previous evening Wilkinson said staff would not be ready to present a proposal for at least 30 to 45 days.

Harvey Campbell, president of BetterYuma.org, which represents banks, title companies, landowners and other stakeholders, said members wanted the opportunity to personally engage with city staff and council members before the impact fees proposal comes before the council.

John Weil, William Katz and Jeff Snow, representatives for Hall’s General Contractor, reiterated the need for the city to involve local developers in impact fee discussions. Clint Harrington of Pilkington Commercial Co. said that Jared Black, president of MPW Industrial Services, told him that if Yuma’s impact fees had been higher the company would have gone to Winslow instead.

Paul Muthart, general manager at Pasquinelli Produce Co., pointed to the recent budget report presented by members of the Neighborhood Leadership Academy who said they felt they got involved too late, which Muthart called a government tendency. He asked that the impact fee work session get on the calendar before it’s too late.

Wilkinson noted that city staff didn’t get a handle on the budget until February, a few months after the NLA started digging into the city’s financials. He said that staff hadn’t yet come up with recommendations, that they are going through the consultant’s initial plan line by line and that they’ve made “substantial changes to it.”

He added that he wouldn’t be able to talk about impact fees until he found out what’s cut from the budget, which the council has yet to adopt, and that if they held a meeting before that, then all discussions would just be guessing.

Council members then discussed when would be the best time to schedule a work session on impact fees. McClendon and Councilman Jacob Miller wanted the meeting to take place in June to gather as much information as early as possible, while other council members preferred to leave it for later.

Nicholls said he preferred to address impact fees after tackling the budget. He added that he doesn’t understand the rush since there is no deadline and that he won’t vote on any impact fees without any input from developers and the community.

Deputy Mayor Gary Knight agreed that it was premature to do it in June and noted that input from developers would be better if they first saw what’s being proposed.

After a debate and a couple of motions, the council voted unanimously to schedule an impact fee work session for July.