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Last week, the Selma City Council met to discuss the city’s business and one of the council members, Samuel Randolph brought up the salary discussion once again to the council regarding the Fire Chief’s salary.

Randolph posed to the council Tuesday, the question about the previous amount the fire chief was set to make before the council spoke about the $100,000 salary increase for the fire chief, a couple meetings back.

The City reported to the council that the fire chief’s previous salary was about $69,000, which led Randolph to tell the council, the chief received a $31,000 pay raise.

Soon after, Randolph made a motion to the council to give Police Chief Kenta Fulford a $110,000 salary, but it died for lack of a second, which led Randolph to question the council once more of how they can give such a substantial amount to one department head and not the other.

“I’m going to respond to that,” said Councilwoman Lesia James. “It’s not that I don’t think Fulford should have it but if you notice, the mayor has already vetoed what we have already put in place. We need to stop battling with this budget because we are going back and forth about what we have already said and to keep going back and forth about this thing, makes us look real bad.”

James said she thinks the council should just leave things alone until they really find out what they need to do due to recent items within the city business being passed then vetoed once again by Mayor James Perkins Jr.

James said to the council despite what she has said prior, she feels Fulford should be the highest one paid out of the two department heads and then Councilman Jannie Thomas added her comments to the conversation speaking on the behalf of the veto by the mayor.

“According to the veto and what I have read based on what the mayor has sent out to public and to us, we were to have a sit down at the table and talk about this and come to decision of how we would do that with our finance committee to see if we were able to bring that raise up to the point that Councilman Randolph is requesting or not,” James said.

Overall, Thomas told the council in order for them to override the veto, they would have to have enough votes but she feels at this present time, they are at a standstill with the matter.

Like Thomas, Council President Warren Young said in order for the back and forth of the matter to cease, they would have to override the veto the mayor has set on the matter and once the council voted during the meeting on the matter again, the override of the veto failed.

“Although there was a majority of council members who voted in favor of the measure, the override does not stand because we needed six votes in order to override the veto. Therefore, it will continue, I guess to be a ping-pong match, but council, I would say that was our opportunity to put an end to it,” Young said.

Young reiterated to the council that within the moment, it was their official opportunity to make a decisive decision on this issue which led to no current resolution.