After a weeks-long campaign by city firefighters, the Concord city government has agreed to reopen talks over their union contracts.
“We understand their frustration, thinking that we were not willing to talk,” Mayor Byron Champlin said. “We are willing to talk.”
The firefighters have pushed for renegotiation of their pay as the result of a wage study, which the city commissioned in 2024, received midway through last year, and formally released during the winter.
With mounting pressure from residents about rising property taxes in a revaluation year, the city told firefighters in June that it had nothing substantive to offer. Money was too tight.
City finances haven’t changed, Champlin said. But he says “there are still avenues for negotiation.” He wouldn’t be more specific about what that could entail.
Firefighters have countered that the city has funding set aside, and has found ways to invest in other things, such as major construction projects.
“We’re cautiously optimistic” about resumed talks, said Ian Gill, president of the union representing firefighters. “We want to see tangible results.”
The message cutting off negotiations in June was abrupt, Gill said: “It felt like a knee-jerk reaction.” It’s important for the tone of the relationship, he said, that the city changed course.
“For us, nothing’s changed,” said Jim Duckworth, a lieutenant who is president of the fire officers union. “The concern is they’re just saying they’ll return to the table so that the pressure will die down a little bit.”
In a tense budget process this year, the city leaned on its reserve accounts to cover cost increases for both a new police station and a golf course clubhouse alongside raises tied to contracts for unions citywide.
Because of the rising debt, city councilors pushed off a wave of future projects in their long-term plan — including major renovations to all city fire stations and the library.
City leaders have also turned down pleas from the fire department to add an engine back to its central station several years in a row.
Champlin said it’s a challenge for city leaders to balance the need to keep facilities sound, employees supported and taxes reasonable.
“On one hand, city council is criticized for allegedly letting our infrastructure deteriorate,” Champlin said. “On the other hand, people are concerned about about their tax rate. On the other hand, we have employees who want and deserve fair compensation for the work that they do.”
The results
A slogan of the firefighters campaign has been that the city “did the study, ignored the results.”
The wage study evaluated selected positions from across the city payroll, assessed where people fall on city pay ladders, and compared Concord’s compensation to a median pay rate based on 27 peer towns and cities across New Hampshire, Massachusetts and Maine.
Across the board, the study determined that Concord fell just below the middle, or median, when compared to those peers, and it pointed to a handful of positions, not dominated by any one department, that fell the farthest behind.
“Overall, job titles at Concord are compensated 3.2% below the 50th percentile of the market,” the study states. “For reference, in comparison to the 60th percentile of the market, job titles are 7.1% below market and 11.3% below market in comparison to the 70th percentile.”
The study dates from 2024 and early 2025. Many city employees have started new contracts and gotten raises since then — though, presumably, so have many of the peers they were measured against.
Notably, the study evaluates pay rates and scales rather than raw earnings. Both city emergency departments, as a result of vacancies, have high rates of overtime. It puts some of their members among the city’s highest paid employees overall, but can also strain morale. All police and fire staff in a city union have among the highest annual raise rates, at a 5% raise on their base pay annually.
When it comes to firefighters, the study found that the department as a whole was 2% behind the median — closer to market than the city as a whole.
Broken down by position, fire officers were farther behind than rank-and-file officers, per the study, leading to compression concerns. Similar compression dynamics were found in the police department.
An EMS captain, for example, falls 8% behind the median and a paramedic lieutenant 3% behind the median. Rank-and-file firefighters were more broadly found to be above the median rate — a little more than 10% above. Leadership — the deputy fire chiefs and the fire chief — were pegged at or slightly above the median rate.
Given unique emergency demands on Concord, Duckworth said — from responding to the state prison to the amount of housing the city is trying to add to the waning capacity of neighboring departments — firefighters don’t believe they should be measured against the median.
“I think we’re worth more than the 50th percentile,” Duckworth said. Union negotiators have said the 70th percentile is a more appropriate target for what they do.
“If you look at Dover,” Duckworth said of one of the cities measured in the study, “Dover has half of the calls that we do.”
According to the firefighters, the city originally set out to compare itself to that 70th percentile benchmark, but backed off.
The study also noted that about two-thirds of city employees, including part-time, make less than the city’s median household income of about $78,000. Households, though, might have one or multiple incomes.
For reference, the median pay for full-time working residents is $67,000 for men and $60,000 for women, according to census estimates. The median family income is $109,000. According to calendar-year earnings reported by the city, the median regular pay for individuals on the city payroll last year was about $69,000.
Police Chief Bradley Osgood retired at the end of last year. Brian LeBrun, the deputy city manager for finance, will retire around the end of this month. City Manager Tom Aspell, nearing the end of a six-week sabbatical, is contemplating retirement.
The police chief and finance director’s positions were found to be around market rate. The city manager’s position was not included in the study.
