By Kate Elizabeth Queram
News & Record
GREENSBORO, N.C. — Police officers and firefighters could receive a 7.5 percent salary increase in the city’s upcoming budget — a pay raise proponents say is necessary to retain good employees and compete with neighboring communities for new ones.
“We’ve never fallen this far behind,” said City Councilman Mike Barber, who proposed the increase earlier this month. “We’re competing against other law enforcement agencies that pay better with less headache, and we’re losing.”
Other City Council members are less enthusiastic. The proposed increase is more than twice the recommended pay raise included in the budget for the rest of the city’s employees, which Councilwoman Sharon Hightower said implies that public safety workers are more important than everyone else.
“If we start valuing one department over another, we start creating low morale,” Hightower said. “Then what are you doing? You’re devaluing everybody else. That’s wrong. I’m sorry.”
The current starting salary for police officers in Greensboro is $35,556 a year— less than in High Point ($36,585), Durham ($37,029), Raleigh ($38,834) and Charlotte ($42,640).
Entry-level firefighters here make $33,483 a year, below what Durham ($34,388), Raleigh ($37,018) and Charlotte ($40,609) pay.
Raleigh and Durham approved those higher salaries this year. Charlotte’s latest budget proposal includes a 2 percent raise on top of its current rate.
Many of those municipalities also offer benefits that Greensboro doesn’t, including signing bonuses and allowing officers to take their patrol cars home.
The competitive market, coupled with a resurgent economy, makes it hard for the city to recruit and retain good officers, Barber said.
“Ten years ago, if we weren’t paying as well as other places, it was OK because the unemployment rate was 10 percent,” he said. “There were a lot of people looking for work and a lot of people that would apply for law enforcement positions.”
Both the police and fire department receive hundreds of applications during each recruiting cycle, but few candidates make it through the initial screening process, city data shows. Last year, 701 people applied to the police academy. Twenty-two people were hired from that pool, short of the police department’s minimum goal of 25 and well below its optimal goal of 35.
Employees in the city’s police department also leave their jobs more frequently than in other departments. The police department’s overall turnover rate is 7.06 percent in the current fiscal year, compared with the city’s rate of 6.83 percent. A majority of those departures — 4.54 percent — were voluntary, compared with 3.4 percent among city employees.
Some of those officers depart for similar jobs in neighboring cities, pursuing better pay and easier interactions with community members.
“We should be compared to our peer cities, but I do believe that it’s very enticing for officers to go to places where there’s not quite as much stress in terms of the political atmosphere,” Councilwoman Marikay Abuzuaiter said.
Turnover is less of an issue in the Greensboro Fire Department — the rate this fiscal year is 4.55 percent, less than both the police department and the city — but recruiting has been a struggle there as well. Last year, 1,508 people applied for the fire academy. The department hired just 16, meeting its minimum goal but falling short of the ideal target of 24.
Boosting entry-level pay would help attract more qualified candidates, according to Assistant Fire Chief Dwayne Church.
“We just want to be competitive with other cities in the state of North Carolina,” Church said. “It’s a problem that absolutely could be helped by having higher starting pay.”
City Manager Jim Westmoreland incorporated Barber’s request in his proposed budget for the next fiscal year, recommending a 5 percent salary increase for police officers and firefighters.
At a work session last week, Barber asked Westmoreland to increase that to 7.5 percent.
“Let’s start there and stay competitive,” Barber said. “I feel like we’re paying for the sins of our past in not addressing this. We’re just not where we need to be and we’re in a position this year with our revenues, I believe, to make a positive step.”
Most council members supported the request, but Hightower remained skeptical. The manager’s budget recommended an average 3 percent merit increase for the rest of the city’s employees. The disparity seems unfair, she said.
“I’m not going to support that until we know how else we’re going to be fair to our other departments,” she said. “I’m not anti-public safety, but if you’re giving 7.5 percent, you ought to give 7.5 percent to everybody.”
Barber disagreed. The larger increase for public safety employees is appropriate because of the services they provide, he said.
“Without public safety, not a lot happens in a community. That does not diminish the importance of the other departments in our city,” he said. “The first and most critical funding we do is public safety. Police and fire. All else follows.”
Most council members are in favor of the proposed 7.5 percent increase, which would make starting salaries for police and fire employees more on par with the pay in neighboring communities. Greensboro is the third-largest city in North Carolina and should pay its public safety personnel accordingly, Mayor Nancy Vaughan said.
“Other communities have been aggressive about doing this in just the last six to 12 months,” she said. “The 7.5 percent really is the least we should do.”
Hightower disagreed. Recommending a 7.5 percent salary increase for one department when other city employees are likely to get 3 percent or less is unfair, she said.
“If you’re going to do one, you’ve got to do the other,” she said. “They’ll try to turn it into ‘Sharon doesn’t support the police,’ but it has absolutely nothing to do with that. It has to do with being fair.”
The council will hold a second budget work session Tuesday to discuss the proposal. City officials declined to comment on cost estimates before then. It’s unclear where the money for the public safety raises would come from, though council members have said they will not raise property taxes to pay for it.
Which means something else — a program, a department — will lose out, Hightower said.
“When you talk about finding the money, what is going to get hurt when you start to do that?” she asked.
Barber said he thinks it has to be done.
“If our council doesn’t demand these salary adjustments, then we have abandoned public safety,” he said. “I believe it’s the most important thing that we will address in this budget and I hope that five or more council members agree.”
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