The city increased its salary offer for firefighters a little more on Tuesday — but it’s still thousands of dollars apart from the firefighters’ union on pay as a critical deadline looms. City staff will present the proposed annual budget to the City Council on Aug. 15. If it’s to include a new compensation package for San Antonio Fire Department employees, the city has to reach a tentative agreement with the San Antonio Professional Firefighters Association soon.
“Many firefighters did not agree with that process,” said union President Joe Jones, who was first elected in 2021 after Chris Steele stepped down as head of the association. “But we were taken down that route and that route didn’t succeed, which is why I would rather talk about the present and future than I would about the past. “The reality is that in the past it was bad strategy and it was poor leadership,” Jones told reporters.