Police association urges council to end pay‑parity policy, cites recruitment, retention problems

Speakers during citizens forum pressed the City Council to remove the city’s pay‑parity policy that links police compensation to firefighter pay. Bruce Sales, speaking for the Mesquite Police Association, said the policy “artificially equates pay for two fundamentally different professions” and argued that Mesquite police are paid significantly behind comparable cities while firefighters are paid slightly above comparable averages. Sales asked council to place the policy on a council agenda for direct consideration and said the association had created a website (www.mesquitepa.com/parity) with statistics comparing the departments.

Sales told council officers now respond to a substantially greater volume of calls than the fire department and said that policing involves higher frequency of violent encounters and different psychological and legal risks. He said adjusting police pay would not require reducing firefighter pay and urged the council to address the underlying policy rather than waiting until the budget cycle is already underway.

Councilmembers responded that public safety pay is a top priority for the city. Deputy Mayor Pro Tem Kenny Burrows said the council had directed the city manager to provide a comprehensive review of public‑safety pay and that the topic would be part of budget workshops in June and July. Councilman D.W. Smith invited members of the public and public‑safety personnel to speak during citizens forum and reiterated that council cannot respond to matters not on the posted agenda but that formal budget discussion and data would be available during the budget process. There was no formal council vote on pay parity at the meeting.