ODESSA, Texas — First responders are among the most appreciated public workers in any city. Not only do they fight the fires, but they also respond to medical emergencies and keep the community safe.
That is why the City of Odessa recently showed their appreciation by approving pay raises for Odessa Fire Rescue.
“We did an internal study with our current pay plan, our skills pays and our incentive pays," Odessa Fire Rescue Chief Jason Cotton said. "We put a plan together to include all of that into a base pay and which in turn increased our raises.”
After the study was done, it was presented to the Odessa City Council, who approved it with little hesitation.
The new plan will include stagger-style pay raises which will kick in next month in May. It will not only help OFR retain key employees, but also recruit new members.
One such position will be the cadets, who can earn a healthy salary while training for the job.
“One of our most important spots was our cadet position. As a cadet, we will hire you at a 40-hour schedule and pay you a salary while we train you," Cotton said. "We will put you through EMT school, we will put you through fire academy and we will pay you a salary to do that. One of our goals was to get that salary for our cadets to $50,000... and we did that."
However, the biggest win for OFR is that they can now compete with top-tier markets.
In the past, OFR lost people to bigger areas such as the DFW area. But with the new salaries, they can compete.
“There are departments that, at the time or prior to last night, paid significantly more than we did. We've had a few members over the past years leave our department to go to the DFW area," Cotton said. "I believe that if we would have had this in play, then there's less of a chance of people leaving our department.”
According to Cotton, firefighters, like the ones he oversees, see a lot that the average joe doesn’t have to deal with.
It's just another reason why they fought for proper compensation.
“The things they do and see most people don't have to deal with and they need to be compensated for it," Cotton said. "It's hard on families, it's hard on firefighters and it's hard on first responders as a whole... we need to get those salaries comparable to other departments and cities to where they're (OFR staff) taking care of.”