Just two months after he was honored by Palo Alto’s elected leaders for nearly three decades of service, retired Fire Chief Geoffrey Blackshire has filed a lawsuit against the city, claiming the city illegally withheld wages for him for more than five years.
The legal dispute revolves around a 3% wage premium Blackshire said he was supposed to receive because of his Emergency Medical Technician certification. Blackshire had been EMT certified since 1997, according to the suit. The city allegedly stopped paying the premium in July 2019, when he was promoted to fire chief.
The wage premium for EMT certification is called out in the city’s compensation plan for the roughly 200 employees who belong to the “management and professional” group, a nonunionized group whose compensation adjustments generally align with those of other Palo Alto labor groups, according to the suit filed Jan. 7 in Santa Clara County Superior Court.
“The City’s conduct — spanning multiple years, payroll periods, and compensation plan renewals — was not accidental or excusable,” Blackshire’s complaint states. “It violated core statutory protections and breached fundamental compensation obligations and statutory duties designed to ensure transparency, accountability and prompt payment of earned compensation, and to prevent precisely the kind of systemic wage deprivation inflicted here.”
The complaint is seeking damages for failure to pay wages, inaccurate wage statement and failure to produce employment records in a timely manner.
Blackshire retired Oct. 31 after 28 years in the department. Days later, the city approved a special proclamation honoring his years of service, with City Manager Ed Shikada singling out his efforts to keep the community safe during the COVID-19 pandemic. Shikada also lauded Blackshire for helping to address the city’s budget challenges, for pursuing reforms that strengthened the department and for enhancing the Palo Alto Fire Department’s recruitment efforts and expanding regional partnerships.
The proclamation that the City Council approved on Nov. 3 also lauded Blackshire for his “calm, consistent presence and focus on the wellness of his team and community” and for initiatives to advance diversity and inclusion. Blackshire in turn lauded Shikada, saying he “couldn’t imagine a better person to work for.”
But according to the new complaint, Blackshire has also been engaged in a behind-the-scenes dispute with management over his wages. He allegedly approached Human Resources officials in early 2023 to express his concern that his salary does not include the EMT premium. He then followed up numerous times later that year, seeking to correct what he characterized as the city’s error, according to the suit. The city did not correct his pay, he said, claiming that his salary already encompassed the EMT premium.
Even without the premium, Blackshire was among the highest paid city employees, according to the city’s salary schedule, with a regular salary of $348,918 in 2024. Only four employees had higher salaries that year.
The complaint asserts the wage statements the city had provided weren’t just incomplete but “affirmatively misleading, as they concealed earned wages, misstated the total compensation owed, and falsely suggested that Plaintiff had been paid all wages due.”
“The City’s conduct was not the result of clerical error or oversight,” the complaint states. “It persisted over multiple years, payroll cycles and compensation plan renewals, despite Plaintiff’s repeated notice and the City’s own internal acknowledgements of the wage premium.”
This story originally appeared in Palo Alto Weekly. Gennady Sheyner is the editor of Palo Alto Weekly and Palo Alto Online. As a former staff writer, he has won awards for his coverage of elections, land use, business, technology and breaking news.