Guest Commentary: Misleading Comparisons of Compensation from Other Cities to Award Excessive Salary Increases

Friends of Davis Fire

Part 2 – Recent Salary Increases to the Firefighters

Disclaimer: Opinions are those of the writer and do not reflect those of The Vanguard or its Editorial Staff.  The Vanguard does not endorse political candidates and is committed to publishing all public opinions and maintaining an open forum subject to guidelines related to decency and tone, not content.

We recently reported that the City of Davis used flawed and misleading data to award excessive compensation increase to the City Manager. (See https://davisvanguard.org/2024/10/guest-commentary-misleading-comparisons-of-compensation-from-other-cities-to-award-excessive-salary-increases/). They did so by using compensation data from 12 regional cities against which to compare the Davis City Manager’s compensation. Claiming this data showed our City Manager was under-compensated, and in July of 2024 the Davis City Council awarded him a 2% annual salary increase retroactive to January 1 of this year, an annual 3.0% bonus retroactive for 2023 and another 3% bonus for the uncompleted 2024 year.

However, in that article we showed that if the comparative compensation data from only 6 regional cities of comparable size were otherwise used, our City Manager earned between 3% and 30% greater than the City Managers of any of those six comparable-sized cities in 2023—and this was before the Council awarded bonuses to our City Manager for both 2023 and 2024.

In May, 2024, the Davis City Council similarly approved a 6.0% increase in base salary for all firefighters retroactive to July 1, 2023. The ostensible reason given for the salary increase was that the total compensation for the average Firefighter II position was 6.0% LESS than the median total compensation earned by Firefighter II-equivalent positions in twelve regional cities and fire protection agencies; and thus a raise to ALL firefighters was appropriate to keep their compensation competitive. However, the Council again based their analysis on misleading data.

Unfortunately, similar to the comparative analysis of compensation of our City Manager, the Davis Firefighter II compensation was also compared to that in ten purportedly “comparable” local cities and two fire protection agencies in the region.  However, many of those ten cities are much larger than Davis, and include Sacramento (population of 525,000), Roseville (population 190,000), and Fairfield (population 119, 000).  Davis’ population is only about 67,000.

An Alternative Fair Comparison with Comparable-Sized Cities

If Firefighter II compensation data is used from the 6 truly “comparable”-sized cities (that is, cities with a population +/- 20% of Davis), the Firefighter II 2023 compensation is actually 2.8% GREATER than the equivalent Firefighter II compensation in the six comparable-sized cities. (Lincoln, Lodi, Napa, Rocklin, West Sacramento, and Woodland—see Appendix 1-a)

Further, comparison of compensation paid to Davis’ Firefighter I positions with equivalent positions in the six comparable-sized cities, showed that the Davis Firefighter I’s total compensation was 5.3% GREATER than the median compensation paid to the equivalent Firefighter I positions in those comparable-sized cities (see Appendix 1-b).

Similarly, comparison of compensation paid to Davis’ Fire Battalion Chief positions with equivalent positions in the six comparable-sized cities, showed that the Davis Fire Battalion Chief’s total compensation was 9.0% GREATER than the median compensation paid to the equivalent Fire Battalion Chief positions in those comparable-sized cities (see Appendix 1-c).

Conclusions

The recent granting of excessive salary increases to all City of Davis firefighters was based, in part, on flawed comparisons of salary/compensation of firefighter employees that included much larger cities rather than limiting the salary comparisons to comparable-sized cities.

If comparisons were only made with comparable-sized cities, it would show that Davis City firefighters already enjoyed a substantial compensation advantage across all firefighter positions compared to employees of similar sized cities. Thus, the resultant recent compensation increases, ostensibly given to keep our employee compensation “competitive,” were not necessary at all to keep our compensation package competitive but still cost the City of Davis in excess of $500,000 per year in these firefighter salary increases.

Appendix 1

Actual Salary Comparisons of Davis Firefighter Positions with Comparable-Sized Cities

The raw data used to perform the calculations displayed in the compensation study was contained in the Staff Report for this matter so these reported results could directly be used in the analysis. Also using the 2023 populations, Firefighter II, Firefighter I, and Fire Battalion Chief compensation information for each of the ten purportedly comparable cities and two fire protection agencies were downloaded and inserted into a spreadsheet for analysis which results are summarized below.

Appendix 1-a – Firefighter II

Author

Categories:

Breaking News City of Davis Elections Opinion

Tags:

3 comments

  1. Once again the no on Q people make a mountain out of a mole hill. Even by their own analysis compensation would be marginally higher than the districts they think are a better model for comparison.

    Yawn.

  2. Here’s a more accurate comparison of the pay between the “comparable-size” cities:

    Battalion Chief
    $54,538 Lincoln
    $55,842 West Sac
    $61,123 Woodland
    $65,832 Davis
    $67,679 Lodi
    $73,742 Rocklin
    $77,492 Napa

    Firefighter II
    $54,538 Lincoln
    $55,842 West Sac
    $61,123 Woodland
    $65,832 Davis
    $67,679 Lodi
    $73,472 Rocklin
    $77,492 Napa

Leave a Comment