Months of controversy and misunderstanding over firefighter pay in Bethel have cooled somewhat, but a resolution isn’t clear, and a collective bargaining agreement is at a stalemate. Firefighters have apologized for accusing the city administration of corruption over the wage dispute. But some local firefighters say the root of the problem is that the first responders weren’t paid enough to begin with.
A new schedule and pay confusion
In May 2025, the City of Bethel changed the way it schedules firefighters on rotational shifts. Instead of working one 24-hour shift and taking 48 hours off, they began working for 48 hours, followed by 96 hours off. Despite the schedule change, the city continued to pay firefighters an hourly rate based on an annual wage, divided by 56-hour workweeks.
Roughly a year into the new schedule, a Bethel Fire Department employee approached the city’s administration to report what they believed was a serious discrepancy. They said the city had mistakenly been paying its firefighters at a reduced rate, carried over from the former schedule. Firefighters should have been earning a higher hourly pay, they claimed – roughly 29% more annually – based off of a 40-hour workweek.
The city agreed it had acted in error. In May 2026, it made retroactive payments going back a year – ranging from $700 to more than $30,000 per employee depending on their pay grades and length of employment. The city also increased firefighters’ hourly rates starting in May 2026.
Accusations of corruption
Three months after the increases, a firefighter came before the Bethel City Council to claim the pay adjustment was only a fraction of what was really owed to firefighters. Lt. Jared “Buster” Hanson accused the city of corruption.
Hanson, who has worked as a firefighter and EMT for the department since 2024, alleged at a city council meeting in August that he and his fellow firefighters had uncovered evidence that the city had willfully, and possibly criminally, acted to cover up a much larger error having to do with a specific type of paid days off – which the city later clarified that Bethel’s fire department does not have.
Hanson didn’t detail the supposed evidence in his public testimony. He called for an independent audit of the city’s pay practices, and for the resignation of Bethel City Manager Lori Strickler. He said her numbers didn’t add up.
Strickler said in the meeting that the dispute should be addressed internally through the fire department’s union, and the terms within its collective bargaining agreement.
Following the August 2026 council meeting, the city discovered its math had been incorrect — but not in the way Hanson and other firefighters alleged. The city had actually been paying firefighters appropriately all along, according to a statement released publicly on Oct. 19.
In an Oct. 9 letter to the fire department shared with KYUK, the city said firefighters are paid an adjusted hourly wage based on a 56-hour workweek, unlike other city employees, who are paid based on a 40-hour workweek.
That means a firefighter making $60,000 annually will make a lower hourly wage than another city employee making $60,000, the city said.
The misunderstanding arose from that 16-hour weekly difference, the city said, and the fact that it annualizes hourly pay. The firefighter who first came forward in May of 2026 thought the fire department should be making the hourly rate of a 40 hour per week employee, but for all 56 hours of a typical firefighter schedule, working out to a higher annual wage.
Payroll records the city provided to KYUK show that annualizing firefighter pay based on a 56-hour workweek has been the practice since at least 2015, the furthest back the city said that reliable publicly available records were available. The city said its own internal search verified the practice going back to at least 2010.
Clarity does little to ease pay tension
The city’s explanation of the error – and the fact that it did not ask firefighters to return any of the money it mistakenly paid – did little to ease tensions.
On Oct. 13, one day after pay was reduced back to pre-May 2026 levels, Hanson and other firefighters were back in city council chambers to decry the change.
“Our new hires will go from $28 an hour, which is reasonable, to a mere $19 an hour, which is unacceptable and irresponsible,” Hanson said.
The department’s newest hire, 21-year-old Matthew Cleaver, said he had just moved to Bethel. The offer letter that brought him from Missouri had listed the pay rate from before the city corrected the error.
“I would love to risk my life for the people of this city, but I've been up here a week, and if I take this pay cut to $19 an hour, I can't afford to live up here at all. I can't afford rent. I can't afford food, and that's one more certified firefighter completely gone,” Cleaver said.
Offer letters shared with KYUK that the city sent to Cleaver and another recently hired firefighter list a later retracted hourly rate of $28.31.
Firefighter testimony at the October meeting focused on retention and low pay – what Hanson claimed was the lowest in the state.
Hanson referenced the 2022 fire that killed three people in a low-income apartment complex in Bethel owned by the local tribal housing authority.
“This action from the city will directly result in the understandable resignations of fire department staff and create the kinds of conditions that lead to tragic loss of life in both emergency medical situations, but also in building fires such as what took place during the [Association of Village Council Presidents, Regional Housing Authority] fire a few years ago,” Hanson said.
Witnesses told KYUK at the time of the fire that firefighters arrived without enough water or a ladder to reach the second-floor apartment, and that responders failed to evacuate all of the building’s residents.
Speaking before the council and in a subsequent public statement, Strickler reiterated that any changes to pay schedules must go through the union representing the firefighters, the Alaska Public Employees Association.
“I cannot, on my own, and council cannot direct the pay increases specifically for these employees. The employees have to work with their bargaining team,” Strickler said.
Strickler also mentioned a May 2026 third-party compensation study the city commissioned. It found that Bethel’s firefighters were paid within the market range, and that their benefits packages were leading the market, she said.
Tentative agreement
At the beginning of October, Bethel firefighters voted through their union not to ratify a new collective bargaining agreement. According to the city, that rejected agreement contained a nearly 10% pay increase for firefighters from their current rate of pay.
The agreement also contained a new clause spelling out the city’s authority to annualize firefighters’ hourly pay at the 56 hour per week rate.
From the perspective of Hanson and other firefighters, voting to ratify the new agreement would seal the fire department’s fate – locking in inadequate pay they saw no contractual justification for.
More accusations and an apology
In the second half of October, tensions over firefighter pay were stoked further. A Facebook post on the popular page “It’s going on in Bethel!” said the return to the previous pay rates could ultimately lead to a serious public safety crisis.
The post didn’t mention the city’s rationale for the change, or the city’s assertion that the matter was in the union’s hands.
Anonymous commenters hurled personal attacks at Strickler and called for her firing, and community members expressed serious concerns about the city’s actions. An anonymous Facebook page, “Little People of Bethel,” filled with dozens of AI-generated memes attacking Strickler and the city. They ranged from humorous memes referencing the TV show "Family Guy" to one portraying Strickler as a slaveholder.
But at the following council meeting on Oct. 27, the messaging from the fire department suddenly shifted. They apologized for the personal attacks and accusations of corruption.
“I'm here to say that I was wrong about issues for our pay, and I apologize for accusing Lori of potential criminal action. Lori is not a criminal, and what she did was not illegal,” Hanson said. “We were given false information, which was provided by Lori and the city as a whole, I suppose. And based off of that information, we followed that to come to our conclusions.”
A precarious position
Hanson said in the Oct. 27 meeting that the question of a livable wage was still unresolved.
“Although we were wrong about the pay, that doesn't change the fact that we're starting out at $19.72 an hour to do a job that I've found that almost nobody actually understands what it is we do or how extremely irresponsible that is to be having that as our pay,” Hanson said.
The city’s human resources director, Laura Cloward, wrote by email to confirm that one firefighter has resigned since the city corrected the pay error. Bethel now posts firefighter positions with the annual starting pay — $57,450 — rather than an hourly rate, to avoid the confusion over 40- versus 56-hour workweeks.
The active collective bargaining agreement doesn’t contain an explicit notice that firefighters will be paid based on an annualized, 56-hour per week rate, Strickler confirmed by email. Unlike prior agreements, the current agreement doesn’t list the annual rate of pay. None include an hourly rate adjusted to reflect a 56-hour average workweek.
Hanson said by email he plans to leave the department in January 2027, and he said another employee is transferring to the police department.
Cleaver, the newcomer, said he is interviewing with fire departments across the country – in places where firefighters start out earning $70,000 or more a year. He said by phone that unfilled positions at the department have already put him in a precarious position as a firefighter.
“If I was on duty like I was the other night, I'm the only Fire I guy certified. So if that structure fire hits, I would have been pretty much the guy that would be responsible for knowing what to do there,” Cleaver said.
Cleaver and Hanson say Bethel firefighters want a bargaining agreement that guarantees higher pay. Hanson said he thinks the city has been in a “doom loop” for far too long and that it’s time to correct course.
Strickler said that the union hasn’t filed any grievance against the city for the way it handled the pay discrepancy. After months of contentious debate, whether the city and union will come to an agreement that Bethel’s firefighters also find acceptable remains the burning question.
