Clovis top pay concentrated in police and fire departments

Clovis’s top city paychecks in 2025 were concentrated where taxpayers spend the most on emergency response: police and fire. All but a handful of the city’s 50 highest compensated employees worked in those two departments, and four police officers plus six firefighters filled the top 10, a pattern driven by overtime, benefits and hard-to-fill shifts.

The concentration fits a city that serves more than 129,000 people through its police department and protected 123,665 residents across 26 square miles through the fire department in 2023-24. That same fire operation ran with six stations, minimum staffing of 19 per shift and a $24.3 million budget, while Clovis has kept public safety at the center of its “Safest City” identity in the Central San Joaquin Valley.

Clovis’s personnel page says the city uses attractive salaries and generous benefit plans to recruit and retain employees, and that formula helps explain why compensation can surge without any scandal attached. The city approved its Fiscal Year 2025-26 budget in June 2025 and began collecting Measure Y funds in April, putting police and fire staffing under a sharper taxpayer lens as leaders balanced service levels against the cost of keeping crews on duty.

Jason M. Ralls, who became fire chief in June 2026 after serving as battalion chief, shows how fast those numbers can climb. Transparent California lists his 2024 total pay and benefits at $509,413.67, including $178,388 in regular pay and $166,347.91 in overtime; the city said his 2025 total compensation was $479,464 and that he would oversee a $31.5 million fire budget and lead 83 sworn firefighters plus 8 support staff.

The regional pattern is not unique to Clovis. Fresno’s 2025 payroll showed 29 of its 50 highest paid employees were firefighters, with two captains at the top largely because of overtime, suggesting that Central Valley cities are paying a premium for public safety coverage as staffing strains stretch budgets.

For Clovis residents, the question is not whether police and fire matter. It is whether the city is paying for necessary coverage, absorbing market pressure from a competitive labor pool, or letting overtime become the default way to keep essential services running. That is the real budget story behind the payroll list.