Contract negations begin between the Austin Firefighters Association and the City of Austin at the Permitting and Development Office, July 30, 2025.
Sara Diggins/Austin American-Statesman
Austin City Council on Thursday was expected to vote on a four-year, $62.8 million labor agreement with the city firefighters union, but the decision appears likely to be delayed after a stark warning from city staff.
At a Tuesday work session ahead of the meeting, officials with the city’s Labor Relations Office recommended postponing the vote, warning that a separate effort by the Austin Firefighters Association to enshrine a per-fire engine staffing ordinance into the city charter threatened to undermine the contract.
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Council Member Krista Laine speaks during a City of Austin press conference regarding homelessness in Austin Tuesday, Oct. 21, 2025.
Mikala Compton/Austin American-Statesman
Two weeks after the city and association reached a tentative agreement, the association announced Oct. 16 it would launch a petition campaign to place a charter amendment on next year’s ballot. The measure would require the city to fund enough positions to staff each fire engine with at least four firefighters.
“If the AFA had an issue with the staffing, we believe they should have brought it to the table” during negotiations, Deputy Labor Relations Officer Roxana Stevens told the council, recommending that it delay the vote and seek to re-open contract negotiations. “They have bypassed the collective bargaining process.”
The four-person staffing model is so prized by the association that in 2018 it successfully convinced City Council to codify it in local ordinance. Now, it wants to ask Austin voters to make it part of the city charter so it would be harder to repeal. If the association collects 20,000 signatures from registered voters by April, the measure will appear on the May 2026 ballot.
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Stevens said one section of the proposed charter amendment is especially concerning because it would prohibit the city from temporarily taking fire engines and other response vehicles offline to save money — a tactic that has become common practice with Austin-Travis County Emergency Medical Service ambulances — unless the city could first prove a “severe financial crisis” that would affect its ability to fund essential services.
“The way that I read it is that you must take away from everywhere else in the city before you touch the Fire Department,” Stevens told the council.
Association President Bob Nicks did not respond to requests for comment. In a post on the union’s X page, Nicks wrote it is “doubtful that the Firefighters will be extorted into going back to negotiations and dropping the petition effort.”
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While the contract was still on the council’s regular meeting agenda as of Wednesday morning, several council members – and Mayor Kirk Watson – backed delaying the vote.
“What I would like to see is us back at the table where we can do that in a collective bargaining agreement,” Watson said on Tuesday.
Council Member Krista Laine agreed, calling it “completely unacceptable” to approve a contract while the charter amendment effort continues.
Austin Firefighters Association President Bob Nicks, center, reads documents as bargaining begins between the Austin Firefighters Association and the City of Austin at the City of Austin Permitting and and Development Center, July 30, 2025.
Sara Diggins/Austin American-Statesman
In his Wednesday post, Nicks said that even if the firefighters decline the city’s invitation to return to the bargaining table, they would still end up with a labor contract through arbitration. In 2021, voters approved a ballot measure that gave the union the right to resolve all future contract disputes with the city through a third-party arbiter.
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The current contract between the city and the association was settled in 2023 after months of arbitration.
One vote still expected Thursday is on a new budget that could cut $8.3 million from the Fire Department’s overtime fund.
While Stevens said Tuesday the tentative contract would allow for four-person staffing, the proposed budget notes that overtime cuts would be achieved through “a planned restructuring of the Fire staffing model.”
In August, Broadnax and Fire Chief Joel Baker proposed lowering the fire engine staffing minimum to three, which would require council to amend the 2018 ordinance that codified the four-person staffing minimum. At the time, Baker said the Fire Department’s goal would still strive to send four firefighters to every fire emergency, but during shifts with insufficient staffing to do so, it would have to send three.
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Nicks previously told the American-Statesman that with the Fire Department’s current staffing levels, overtime funding is needed to ensure four-person staffing, which is considered best practice for firefighter safety and effective emergency response.
City spokesperson Erik Johnson did not say how the Fire Department staffing model would change if Council approves the $8.3 million overtime cut on Thursday.
The cut “is a recommendation,” Johnson said, “but achieving those savings does not necessarily mean the Fire Department will adopt the exact staffing model.”
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