The pay numbers only tell a part of the story. You need to add in the pension numbers for each of the fire departments as well. That is where HFD makes their money. Their big selling point to new recruits is that if they work with HFD for 15 years, they will have $1M minimum in pension benefits. Because of state law which controls the governance of pensions, the pension boards do not have to provide much, if any, transparency as to what they are doing and only have to present the municipality with a bill each year to fund their pension.
HFD makes big bucks off their pension. The City finally made some changes to all 3 pensions (police, fire and muni worker) last legislative session. HFD is butt hurt because they finally had to make cuts to their benefits (cuts the other 2 pensions had agreed to make in years prior), and now we have this referendum, which makes no sense and if it passes, will result in less city services because the City will have to either lay off firefighters or cut down on fire equipment.