Joplin Police/Fire could see big pay increases if city secures funding source
The Joplin City Council held a work session Monday evening to discuss the need for wage increases for public safety personnel.
Members of both the Joplin Police Department and Joplin Fire Department could be seeing some big pay increases if the city can secure a funding source.
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The numbers would be similar for the Joplin Fire Department as well.
The issue is that the city says they have an $8.5 million funding gap that needs filled in order to pay for these raises.
City Manager Nick Edwards says with voter approval, the city can assess up to $1 in real and personal property tax and generate an estimated $9 million.
The Council voted unanimously to work up an ordinance for next week’s meeting to officially propose the increase and ready it for the August 2nd ballot.
The city says the current property tax levels are below other similarly sized cities across Missouri.
The council also talked about other ways to fund it but decided the property tax increase proposal was the best way to present it to the public.
Councilman Phill Stinnett says if they’re going to give police and fire these big pay raises, they’ll have to give all public city employees a raise too.
“If you go to the Captain at $119,000..that’s $17,000 more than our human resource director makes. It’s $12,000 more than our community health director makes..our parks and rec director makes,” said Stinnett. “Proportionately, we’re gonna have to do the same thing for the general employees. I’m not saying the public safety people are not entitled to more–they are–for the job they do, I believe that. But we can’t do this kind of raise and not do something for fairly significant for other public employees.”
Even though Stinnett isn’t a fan of this proposal he says he would vote for it. “Let the people decide, it’s their right, but I don’t think we’re taking a good plan to them. I think it’s going to be doomed because we are not the typical voter setting up here.”
“I have nobody tell me that they’d vote for this. It’s too big an increase, it’s too big of step, but whatever the council decides I’ll go along with and won’t say anything negative after that. I just think it’s the wrong move.”
Click here or the link below to see the full presentation: