Toronto firefighters have a new collective agreement, cementing them as the highest-paid firefighters in the province in terms of base salary.

The decision, awarded on Friday after arbitration between the city and the Toronto Professional Firefighters’ Association, also maintains the long-standing practice of advancing firefighter wages in lock-step with police salaries.

“With arbitration you don’t get everything you want, but overall we feel the decision is balanced,” said Toronto Professional Fire Fighters’ Association president Frank Ramagnano.

“By 2018 we’ll be at the exact same level as Toronto police, we’re just taking a slightly different road to get there,” Ramangnano said.

The new deal covers 2015-18. The arbitration award represents a roughly 8.5-per-cent-increase over four years. Most of those increases are loaded on the front end of the four-year period. In 2018, salaries will increase by only about half a per cent that year.

As of July 2017, the base salary for a first-class firefighter will be $97,910 per year — about $8,000 per year more than under the previous collective agreement.

Retroactive wage increases will be paid out within 90 days to the city’s 3,000 plus firefighters, the arbitration ruling says. That means the majority of cost increases from the new agreement must be paid out in lump sums.

Toronto firefighters had been without a contract since 2014, when talks broke down between the association and the city.

While no other Ontario firefighters earn as high a base salary, Ramagnano said in terms of total compensation, including benefits like bankable sick days and paid-duty assignments, Toronto firefighters are the lowest-paid emergency services workers in the city.

“Our vacation isn’t as generous,” Ramagnano said. “We didn’t get any increase to our eye care packages, like other comparables did.”

Ramagnano also pointed to lower pay on statutory holidays, and a work week that’s two hours longer than that of Toronto police officers.

Given that the new deal covers up to only 2018, Ramagnano said he hopes the next collective agreement can be reached through negotiation, instead of going to arbitration.

The increased costs of the new deal will put more pressure on city coffers, even after city council voted in May to freeze all budgets at 2017 levels for a year.

After accounting for inflation, that’s the equivalent of cutting $11 million from the operating budget.

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The city faces an initial budget shortfall of $343 million in 2018 unless property taxes are raised above the roughly 2-per-cent inflation mark.