SignOnSanDiego.com > News > Gerry Braun -- Firefighter has polite response to mayor
San Diego's firefighters, like its sports teams, are learning to ride the fickle waves of public opinion.
Not that long ago, firefighters were so popular that our elected officials kept dressing up to look like them. Recall that as the Cedar fire raged, four council members appeared before the media in identical yellow turnout coats.
A fashion faux pas? Hardly.
Sept. 11,2001, had transformed firefighters into the new astronauts, and politicians were their groupies. San Diego Mayor Dick Murphy wore his yellow coat so often, and so far from the fire lines, that he called to mind a trick-or-treater who insists on sleeping in his Batman costume.
San Diego has a new mayor now – and don't the firefighters know it.
Jerry Sanders inherited a fiscal crisis created by the city's play-now-pay-later philosophy, and part of his solution is holding the line on salaries.
That's not as easy as it sounds – especially when dealing with public safety employees, whom the public regards as selfless and heroic and council members respect for the power of their endorsements.
This year, Sanders caved to the cops, who were quitting the force in droves to take better-paying jobs in other cities. After going without for years, police officers got modest pay raises.
He wasn't about to do the same for firefighters and paramedics, though. They aren't making an exodus, in part because, unlike cops, they generally lose seniority when they join a new department.
Here's how Sanders made the case against them: “Pay raises, in my opinion, should be based on market rate.” Here's what people heard: Why give raises to employees who work only 10 days a month and make $100,000 a year doing it?
Read the article by clicking the link above and see how the firefighters respond to this question. I think you will find it interesting!
