By Bruce Eggler
Times-Picayune (New Orleans)
Copyright 2006 The Times-Picayune Publishing Company
After hearing that the city’s revenue is running ahead of predictions in several categories, disgruntled New Orleans firefighters and emergency medical service workers renewed their demand Thursday that they be included in raises Mayor Ray Nagin announced this week for about 1,450 police officers and a handful of newly hired firefighters.
“The safety of your constituents is eroding away,” Firefighters Association Local 632 President Nick Felton told the City Council’s Budget Committee. He called the package of raises “a slap in the face” to hundreds of veteran firefighters who he said stood by their posts during Hurricane Katrina even though they were repeatedly passed over for raises that other city workers got in recent years.
Council members listened sympathetically to the firefighters and praised their work, with more than one calling them “heroes,” but they made no commitments.
One of the pieces of good news that upset Felton and his colleagues was that property tax collections are running far ahead of projections. Assistant Chief Administrative Officer Cary Grant said 82 percent of the property tax bills sent out in May have been paid, and the rate is expected to rise a few more percentage points as late checks straggle in.
Because of the widespread devastation and economic dislocation caused by Katrina, Nagin’s administration had forecast that a much lower percentage of property tax billings would be collected. The higher collection rate should mean the city will get considerably more than the $28.5 million it had budgeted from property tax this year, though a sharp decline in assessments since Katrina means collections will be well below the 2005 figure of about $80 million.
In other good news, sales tax collections through May were more than $19 million higher than the administration, in a highly pessimistic forecast last fall, had budgeted for all of 2006, though the total was still down 25 percent from for the same period in 2005.
Entergy franchise fee payments, occupational license fees, electrical and mechanical permit fees, and several other revenue categories also are running well ahead of forecasts, though other categories are significantly below projections. The sanitation service fee, for example, has brought in only $301,000, just 7 percent of the amount budgeted for the year and $9.4 million less than at this time last year.
Despite the overall good news on tax and fee collections, the city continues to depend on special post-Katrina revenue sources, such as Community Disaster Loan proceeds and FEMA reimbursements, to keep operating.
Saying the city can afford to give his members a raise, Felton pointed out that New Orleans got $3.6 million from the Legislature this year as reimbursement for support services the city provides to Harrah’s New Orleans Casino, and that Nagin said the pay package he announced Tuesday carries a price tag of only $2.2 million.
Seeking to aid recruitment and halt an exodus of New Orleans police and fire personnel since Katrina, Nagin proposed raising salaries for all police officers by 10 percent and boosting the pay for new firefighters, though not those already on the force, by $5,300 a year. Several council members quickly endorsed the raises and promised to enact them as soon as possible.
Nagin said the package could be covered partially with savings accrued from budgeted but unfilled positions in the Police and Fire departments, and by dipping into the $3.6 million the Legislature approved.
Explaining why not all firefighters would get a raise, Nagin noted that firefighters, unlike other municipal workers, get a state-mandated 2 percent annual pay increase starting in their third year on the job. Nagin also cited the so-called “longevity” raises as his reason for leaving firefighters out of previous citywide pay increases.
In addition, the city is under court orders to pay as much as $150 million to about 1,000 current and retired firefighters or their heirs to cover longevity raises the city failed to pay for many years.
Dismissing such arguments against raises for the Fire Department as “smoke and mirrors,” Felton told the council members, “Your New Orleans firefighters are severely and grossly underpaid.”
Similar sentiments came from Richard Hampton, president of the Association of Fire Chiefs, and Mark Reis, deputy director of the city’s Emergency Medical Services.
Councilman Arnie Fielkow noted that Nagin said the raises he requested this week were “a first step,” to be followed by further study of how to increase salaries for all firefighters and EMS workers. “I hope very much we can take the second and third steps,” Fielkow said, adding warm praise for the work of all first responders.
Fielkow asked Felton how much a 10 percent raise for all firefighters would cost.
Councilwoman Stacy Head asked how the take-home pay for first-year and fifth-year Orleans Parish firefighters, including overtime, compares with the pay for their counterparts in Jefferson Parish.
Felton promised to get them the numbers they requested.