Mayor Cara Spencer (L) Fire Chief Dennis Jenkerson (C) and Police Chief Robert Tracy (R)
Sean Malone, KMOX News
Significant raises for St. Louis Police Command Staff have been tabled for at least two weeks, due in part to the matching pay raises they would trigger for the Fire Department jeopardizing the City's balanced budget. Mayor Cara Spencer says the City only received 36 hours notice of the raises before the meeting and must pass a balanced budget by the end of the month.
Chief of Police Robert Tracy says the pay parity rule, approved by over 60% St. Louis voters in 1970 and upheld in the courts in 2019, is holding back his department from offering competitive wages.
"If the excuse [is] to say you can't make this St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department competitive because you have to pay the firemen, then find out how to pay the firemen or change the rules."
The rule he is referring to is a pay parity rule that gives equal raises to the Fire Department when the Police Department receives a raise. Tracy says this isn't fair when it comes time to negotiate raises.
"For the three times that I've negotiated, it was the police department doing the negotiations but [the fire department] automatically got the raises that we got."
Tracy's issue is while the Police Department has done givebacks in exchange for raises, the Fire Department also gets those raises without making concessions.
Just over a year ago, the police department agreed to eliminate unfilled positions and reduce their budgeted strength by 124 to 1,100 in exchange for a 7% raise.
"As always, the City said, 'but then we got to pay the Fire Department that,'" griped Tracy, "I said 'have we sat down and negotiated with the firemen and see what concessions they're giving up?'... and the answer was no."
Asked if he is calling for the pay parity role to be abolished, Chief Tracy didn't go that far, saying "I am asking for the Board of Aldermen and governments to take a look at it."
Tracy multiple times during the meeting and in a press conference afterwards expressed his respect for the fire department, with the former NYPD officer saying he has family who are fire fighters, but he also contrasted their work.
"We have inherit risks in our positions, but we also have other things that police officers do, interaction with the public, carrying a firearm, criminal and civil liability that we're exposed to more." It adds "to characterize our work as secondary to any other public safety function is to fundamentally misunderstand the scope of the modern fire service and to disparage our professional members."
This point was disputed in a statement to KMOX by IAFF Local 73, the union representing the City's Firefighters.
"Chief Tracy's suggestion that police officers face inherently greater risk than firefighters is not supported by the evidence," the statement read."
Like Tracy making clear his appreciation for firefighters, the IAFF Local 73 acknowledges this is a budget argument coming from the Chief of Police, not a policy one.
Local 73 President Dan Clark ends the statement saying "We will continue to defend pay parity as long as it takes."
Asked about the pay parity, Mayor Cara Spencer said her focus is on the current budget.
