By MES Dispatch Staff
The Briefing
- San Jose Fire Engineer Spencer Piercy earned $437,337 in overtime pay in 2025, $411,000 in 2024, and $287,000 in 2023, making him the city’s highest-compensated employee each of those years, according to public city compensation data.
- City officials said Piercy’s overtime was accumulated by filling vacant paramedic, hazardous incident, and fire engineer shifts — roles the department has been unable to fully staff since the COVID-19 pandemic created a severe licensed paramedic shortage.
- The San Jose Fire Department responds to more than 110,000 calls annually, maintains roughly 750 employees, and carries a vacancy rate of approximately 8%; the department’s total employee compensation costs were on pace to exceed its $331 million approved budget by approximately $13 million in the current fiscal year, primarily due to overtime.
- Nearly 400 San Jose fire and police employees earned six-figure overtime sums in 2025, more than triple the number who did so in 2020; San Jose spent $71 million on police overtime last year alone — $45 million over budget.
- The San Jose City Council was scheduled to vote on a proposed budget that includes overtime reform measures; the city faces a $50 million annual budget deficit and has proposed delaying construction of a planned fire station in the Little Saigon neighborhood.
SAN JOSE, Calif. — A San Jose fire engineer accrued more than $1 million in overtime pay over three years, according to city compensation data, as persistent staffing shortages and rising service demands continue to drive public safety overtime costs to levels that have significantly exceeded budgeted amounts in both the fire and police departments.
Fire Engineer Spencer Piercy earned $437,337 in overtime in 2025 — more than twice his base pay and nearly double the salary of Mayor Matt Mahan — following overtime earnings of more than $411,000 in 2024 and $287,000 in 2023, according to data published on the City of San Jose’s open data portal. City officials said Piercy accumulated those hours by voluntarily filling vacant shifts on the department’s paramedic, hazardous incident, and fire engineer teams. The San Jose Fire Department has contended with a severe shortage of licensed paramedics since the COVID-19 pandemic and has relied on other qualified personnel to maintain minimum staffing levels on paramedic-staffed units. The city did not disclose whether Piercy’s overtime hours were subject to annual caps or the total number of hours worked. Piercy did not respond to requests for comment.
Piercy is among nearly 400 San Jose fire and police department employees who earned six-figure overtime pay in 2025 — a figure more than triple the number that did so in 2020. San Jose spent approximately $71 million on police overtime last year, a sum $45 million over its approved budget, though a significant portion of the overage was offset by savings from unfilled positions; the police department’s total compensation costs finished $16.5 million above budget. The fire department’s total compensation costs were on pace to exceed its $331 million approved budget by roughly $13 million in the current fiscal year, due primarily to overtime spending. As of February, police overtime was tracking approximately 20% above the prior fiscal year.
Jerry May, president of the San Jose firefighters’ union, attributed the overtime surge to structural hiring challenges and escalating service volume, and called for expanded recruitment and retention efforts as the only durable solution. The department now responds to more than 110,000 calls annually and faces rising pressure from increased wildfire risk and homelessness-related emergency calls. Its roughly 750-person workforce carries a vacancy rate of approximately 8%. Tom Saggau, a spokesperson for the San Jose police union, noted that the police department — authorized for approximately 1,700 employees with a sworn-personnel vacancy rate of roughly 9% — faces comparable challenges, and argued the city should budget accordingly rather than treat overtime as an anomaly.
“Staffing just doesn’t add up to meet the need, so overtime is what’s used,” Saggau said.
San Jose officials have characterized overtime as a necessary tool for maintaining public safety service levels while emphasizing ongoing efforts to reduce its cost. In March, the City Council adopted police overtime policy changes projected to save at least $8 million annually, including redeployment of officers from specialized units to field patrols, a lower cap on paid time off earned through overtime, and additional approval requirements for certain overtime shifts. A February memo from the city’s budget director cautioned that those savings might not be sufficient to cover future overages. The proposed budget before the council for a Tuesday vote included additional reform measures, though fire department strategies focused primarily on filling vacant positions rather than structural overtime policy changes. Greg Woods, a criminology professor at San Jose State University, said departments bear a fiscal responsibility to keep overtime within budget — regardless of the service pressures driving it.
“If they can’t, that means that there’s something going wrong with the equation,” Woods said. “And that begs accountability.”