RICHMOND — After less than a year on the job, Richmond city manager Carlos Martinez was fired Tuesday.

Richmond Mayor Tom Butt confirmed that City Council members voted in closed session around 10:30 p.m. to end Martinez’s contract, effective immediately. The council’s decision obliges union leaders who have called for the city manager’s termination over the past few months, accusing him of unfair labor practices.

“The labor relations in the city have come to a collapse,” said Detective Ben Therriault, head of the Richmond Police Officers Association, at the July 16 City Council meeting. “For the past 10 months, labor has been worse than it has been in the past 10 years.”

Martinez, in an interview Wednesday, said he “accepts and respects” the city council’s decision, and was grateful for his short tenure as city manager. He wouldn’t speak to the allegations of unfair labor practices.

“(The City Council) has many tough decisions to make, and this is one of them,” Martinez said. “They deemed it to be the right one; I happened to disagree with it. But I do respect it, and I know it was a difficult one to make.”

Under the terms of Martinez’s five-year contract, he was an “at will” employee who could be terminated with or without cause at any time by a City Council majority vote. Since he was involuntarily terminated, he will be paid a lump-some severance package of a year’s salary — $260,000 — per the contract.

Union leaders lambasted Martinez during the recent budget process, when he identified a $7.6 million shortfall in fiscal year 2019-20, and identified 12 positions to be cut in order to make up for it. Martinez said they were upper management positions, not rank and file.

After meeting with department heads and finding other ways to trim the budget, the projected deficit was reduced to $3.3 million. The city ended up adopting a budget that did not require layoffs.

Council members Nathaniel Bates, Melvin Willis, Eduardo Martinez, and Demnlus Johnson voted in favor of terminating the city manager, while Butt, Ben Choi and Jael Myrick voted against it, Butt said in an interview.

Community Services Director Rochelle Polk was appointed to act as interim city manager, but declined. As of now, the city has no acting city manager, and the mayor has called a special City Council meeting Saturday morning to appoint someone, Butt’s chief of staff Alex Knox said.

“I think the council made a hasty decision in an irresponsible way,” Myrick said in an interview Wednesday morning.

Myrick said the unions’ demand to fire Martinez “so abruptly” was “unreasonable,” and that he would have been open to putting Martinez on a probationary period instead and making a vetted determination later on as to whether to terminate him.

Though the decision will have its consequences, Myrick said he is confident that city leadership will keep things stable.

Willis, in an interview Wednesday, said the decision to terminate Martinez was an “uncomfortable” one, but felt it necessary to maintain city workers’ morale.

“The only thing that I kept on hearing was chaos, chaos, chaos within City Hall and within the ranks and a lack of faith in the city manager’s leadership,” Willis said.

Martinez previously worked as city manager in East Palo Alto, and was chosen in August 2018 to replace outgoing city manager Bill Lindsay, and started Nov. 1.