Letter: Surging Hollister firefighter pay is alarming

Numbers don’t lie with the remarkably unsustainable fiscal path for fire services in San Benito County. 

With constant misinformation, I must set the record straight on skyrocketing costs and a broken system needing immediate reform. 

If we ignore these warning signs, we will continue tumbling down a fiscal avalanche that will cause eventual layoffs for firefighters and other local agencies like the sheriff’s office, police department, DA’s office and other critical services. 

Here are key facts to balance one-sided misinformation in media and public meetings: 

• In 2024, one Hollister firefighter alone made $448,667 in total compensation, which included $144,154 in overtime pay. Another Hollister firefighter made $408,143 in compensation, including $127,500 in overtime pay. 

• A dozen Hollister firefighters in 2024 made at least $300,000.

• Hollister’s total firefighter overtime cost in 2024 was $2.1 million compared with regular pay at just over $6 million. 

• The Hollister Fire Department’s budget has more than tripled since the contract began in 2013 to a new high of $16.3 million this fiscal year with compensation at close to $13 million.

• In between, the city used millions in grants to fund staffing increases—always a risky maneuver—and chose to continue funding those positions with limited city dollars when the grants ended. 

There are inevitable overtime costs for fire departments. But a firefighter making nearly a half-million dollars is ludicrous for a small community, and $2.1 million in total overtime is a huge red flag. 

Partly to blame for this overtime cost was the city’s quiet move to raise minimum staffing levels per shift. More firefighters per engine in the policy amounts to more overtime. 

Of course, firefighters should make good wages, and we all want optimal fire protection. Local governments, however, don’t have limitless dollars to spend on fire or any services. We budget for what we can afford—period. 

This hasn’t happened at the City of Hollister, which contracts out fire services to San Benito County and San Juan Bautista. 

The prior Hollister City Council burned through once-healthy operating reserves—every government’s savings account for one-time expenses—in two short years by overspending on operating expenses and non-essential programs. It’s widely considered ill-advised to use reserves for ongoing expenses because eventually those dollars run out, and then what?

In 2022-23, the city’s operating reserves were initially projected at $13.25 million, but ended at $11 million in June 2023, plummeted to $6.4 million in June 2024, and are projected at $3.8 million by June of this year. 

This prompted negotiations to increase the county’s and San Juan Bautista’s contribution toward fire services—even though the county was never informed of the city’s bad budget decisions as mandated in the fire contract.

Still, the county negotiated an amended deal with the same contracted staffing as the current agreement—two firefighters per engine at the county’s airport station—adding $1.1 million to the annual contribution (a 50% increase) and hundreds of thousands of dollars in fee revenue. Importantly, the deal would have prevented firefighter layoffs. 

Everything was in place for a solution—until San Juan Bautista’s City Council rejected a great deal to keep the town’s fire station staffed.

Hollister asked San Juan for just over $400,000 the first year climbing to just over $500,000 in year three for minimum staffing of two firefighters per engine, just like the county’s station at the airport. Two-per-engine staffing equates to six full-time firefighters in total. 

Considering one firefighter costs about $250,000 annually right now, that’s conservatively $1.5 million in personnel costs absorbed by Hollister for the San Juan station. It’s a fantastic deal for San Juan, where the entire annual city budget is about $2 million.

With the reality of all these numbers laid out above, local governments must drastically change our approach to fire protection or we will continue tumbling down this fiscal avalanche.

Kollin Kosmicki

San Benito County Supervisor