Money, MATA, xAI: Top Memphis City Council votes of 2025
One of the biggest Memphis City Council votes of the year extended a pay raise to firefighters. (Patrick Lantrip/The Daily Memphian file)
The Memphis City Council’s most revealing moment of the year came at its last meeting of 2025.
The council voted on a 2% raise for Memphis firefighters to start with the first paycheck of calendar year 2026 — the middle of the city’s fiscal year.
The pay raise that came at a cost to the city of $1.9 million.
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Memphis City Council 2025 budget season firefighters pay raise Memphis Area Transit Authority xAI Paul Young Unlock 2025 Subscriber OnlyThank you for being a subscriber to The Daily Memphian. Your support is critical.
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Bill Dries
Bill Dries covers city and county government and politics. He is a native Memphian and has been a reporter for almost 50 years covering a wide variety of stories from the 1977 death of Elvis Presley and the 1978 police and fire strikes to numerous political campaigns, every county mayor and every Memphis Mayor starting with Wyeth Chandler.
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