Memphis firefighters feeling shortchanged in city’s $900M budget
- FOX13 Memphis News Staff
- Jun 11, 2025
MEMPHIS, Tenn. – The Memphis City Council passed a $900 million budget Tuesday night. That included a three percent pay raise for city employees. But the leader of the Memphis Firefighters Association isn’t happy about that increase.
Thomas Malone, president of the Memphis Firefighters Association, said they agreed to a contract with the city last year that allowed for a five percent raise in the years 2025 and 2026. But the budget passed by the city council only allows for a three percent increase.
When the firefighters association opposed the difference, Memphis City Councilman Edmund Ford Sr. delivered a strong message.
“When we did the budget, we tried to make everybody happy last year. After what y’all got, I told y’all don’t come back this year. Y’all didn’t understand what I said. I said do not come back this year,” Ford Sr. said.
Malone said the union didn’t participate in budget discussions this year because of that five-percent promise. The city council approved that raise last year, and Memphis Mayor Paul Young included it in his version of the budget. But city councilmembers disagreed.
Malone expressed his frustrations before the final vote Tuesday night, and councilwoman Pearl Eva Walker, who sponsored the resolution, had a response of her own.
“We are not able to uphold that under the law,” Walker said. “Raises like that can’t be carried over from one year to the next.”
Malone said he doesn’t know how he can trust the city council moving forward.
“How do you trust this body again?” Malone said. “How can you stand there and say that we got to come to an agreement, and then a year later, without saying anything to anybody, giving anybody any pre-warning or anything else, a year later they say, ‘Hey, y’all know we changed our minds.'”
Malone added that they’ve had problems with retention without the pay raise. He said, as of June, they’ve had 70 people resign, and he’s concerned that number will increase with only a three-percent pay raise.