Durham could raise police and firefighters’ pay Tuesday. Will it be enough?

The Durham City Council is expected to raise police and firefighters’ pay Tuesday night to compete with other cities and shore up the thinning ranks.

The city has 855 sworn positions across 20 jobs in the two departments, according to agenda materials for the council’s meeting.

In 2017, the city adopted pay plans for the departments designed to go up regularly with the market and reward performance. Each job has a minimum to maximum salary, with 5% steps that employees can earn for effective or better performance.

After three year without market adjustments, the city raised the pay plan last June by 4% for police and 3.5% for firefighters. At the time, officials said they would have to make an additional adjustment later.

The new proposal further adjusts the plan while maintaining 5% steps within salary ranges. A police recruit’s salary would rise 10.6%, from $38,511 to $42,593. A firefighter recruit’s salary would rise 14.3%, from $35,592 to $40,682.

Jimie Wright, president of the Professional Firefighters of Durham, has said there is concern about pay compression, or the difference in pay, the proposal would create between new and existing firefighters.

“It is a real issue,” acknowledged John J. Scott, the city’s interim director of Human Resources. “But pay compression will not be addressed under this current proposal. These plans are merit based and not strictly years of service.”

Employee turnover costs

As of November, turnover among police recruits had increased from 43% to nearly 56% over the previous year, according to Human Resources. Police officer turnover had risen from 10% to 16%.

Turnover for firefighter recruits was 10.9%, while overall firefighter turnover had risen from 3.4% to 8.1%.

Attrition costs money. Losing a trained police recruit costs $108,000, while losing a trained firefighter recruit costs nearly $72,000, according to the city.

For the new adjustment, the city studied 13 municipalities: Raleigh, Chapel Hill, Wake Forest, Cary, Greensboro, Charlotte, Morrisville, Winston-Salem, Wilmington, Apex, Fayetteville, Norfolk and Richmond in Virginia. The study found Durham’s police pay lagged 12% and firefighter pay lagged 10%.

But Wright said the plan still will not bring all Durham firefighters to the city’s hourly wage of of $16.92.

“We’ve lost a significant amount of firefighters last year due to compensation because we are the only ones who are not paid the city hourly wage,” Wright said.

Tuesday’s proposal will already cost $4 million, the plan states. Raising the pay to Durham’s minimum livable wage would cost another $2.27 million.

If approved, the proposed pay increase will take effect Tuesday and show up in the Jan. 28 paychecks for both groups.

“I’m very hopeful that council will move ahead with the plan,” Police Chief Patrice Andrews previously told The News & Observer.

In addition to a pay increase, the police chief announced in mid-December that she and other high-ranking officers and detectives will join patrols this month to help ease the staffing shortage problem.

The “very temporary” program will require four days of patrols through March and will not affect “the tasks that they have to do in their day-to-day work,” Andrews told the City Council.

This story was originally published January 17, 2022 at 1:48 PM.