Houston Fire Chief Sam Peña will face a “no confidence” vote by members of the city’s fire union over what nearly 100 district chiefs say has been a lack of leadership and a failure to adequately equip or pay firefighters.

The vote, which is expected to take place in the next week, would have no practical effect on Peña’s position. Mayor Sylvester Turner is the only person who can remove Peña from the post he has held since the mayor appointed him in 2016.

The union’s Tuesday announcement marks the latest development in the increasingly fraught relationship between rank-and-file firefighters and the Turner administration.

Peña and Turner separately called the criticisms unfair and said the vote was part of a broader political campaign to discredit the city’s current leadership.

In a letter to Houston Professional Fire Fighters Association President Marty Lancton, 95 of the city’s roughly 100 district chiefs wrote that they asked for the union’s members to take the vote out of safety concerns for the public and firefighters.

“For over three years we have seen our department decimated by budget cuts, shift adjustment threats and low pay,” they wrote. “Our fleet has progressively deteriorated and has become increasingly unsafe for our members to operate. It is now normal to have apparatus out of service for hours upon hours which results in delays or inadequate responses to emergency calls. The citizens of Houston have suffered enough.”

They also accused Peña and Turner of having “blamed, ridiculed and threatened” firefighters over pay issues including Proposition B, the voter-approved city charter amendment to give firefighters equal pay to police officers of the same rank and experience.

For months, Peña and Turner have faced criticism from the fire union over Prop B, the implementation of which has been stalled since a state district judge ruled it unconstitutional in May. The union has appealed that ruling, which is now before the 14th Court of Appeals.

Firefighters at the same time have decried changes to HFD’s staffing that Peña says will help balance the department’s budget while not seriously affecting response times. The plan would move HFD to a three-shift model, which Pena says would allow firefighters to work the same 20 24-hour shifts that are required every 72 days under the current, four-shift structure. In some weeks, firefighters would work extra shifts. In other weeks, they would have more time off.

In a statement, Peña said that he has had an “open door policy” while leading the department, and that he stood by the “work and significant progress” HFD has made in maintaining its fleet, protecting firefighters from cancer and equipping them for flood response.

Peña also said the requested vote is part of a “divisive and unnecessary” strategy “to discount and discredit the positive work this administration has done.”

“I know that at the core of their discontent is the union’s inability to negotiate a contract for its members,” he wrote.

A spokeswoman for Turner, who is running for re-election, said in a statement that HFD’s capital budget has nearly doubled under his administration, and that the department has purchased dozens more vehicles, including engines and ambulances.

The mayor separately described the call for a vote of no confidence a political tactic and said he has “every confidence” in Peña.

“Not only is he doing a great job for the Houston Fire Department, but he is also doing an excellent job for the City of Houston,” Turner said in a Tuesday statement. "What the union is doing is 100 percent political and I am certain that the public will see it for what it is."

Some of the letter’s signatories took issue with those characterizations on Tuesday, and said that they were acting on behalf of those who have voiced long-held concerns about the leadership and future of the department.

“We’re the ones that make sure your kids are OK,” Mo Davis, a district chief, told reporters at a Tuesday press conference. “And we can’t do it if you don’t give us the resources we need. We don’t want a lot. This has nothing to do with anything other than giving us the resources we need.”

District Chief Chris Chavez says he has worked for HFD for four decades, and never thought he would call for a “no confidence” vote. He told reporters that he did so because of a “veil of uncertainty” that he said has been increasingly detrimental for firefighters in recent months.

“We speak for the men,” he said. “The guys are with us every day … I never thought I would be doing this, but I think it’s time.”

Lancton also responded to Turner’s statement, saying he had received the district chiefs’ letter last week and did not organize the effort.

robert.downen@chron.com

jasper.scherer@chron.com