Raleigh to raise police, city employees’ pay, but will it be competitive enough?
Proposed pay increases for city staff, including Raleigh police officers, reflect a new study that most employees and the public haven’t seen.
City Manager Marchell Adams-David based the recommended increases in her $1.78 billion recommended budget on a new classification and compensation study.
The results of that study, presented to city leaders in March, found many of the city’s pay ranges were below peer cities’ ranges and the market rate, especially for salary floors.
That’s why nearly 3,000 non-exempt employees, usually hourly employees, and public safety employees would receive an 11% pay increase and just over 1,000 exempt employees would receive a 9% pay increase under the proposed budget. It also would raise the starting salary for firefighters, police officers and emergency call takers.
The News & Observer requested a copy of the classification and compensation study in March when it was presented to city leaders. When asked this week if the study is finished, a city spokesperson said it’s in the “implementation phase.”
“While we consider [the implementation phase] of the study, the data gathering is finished,” communication director Robin Deacle said. Salary ranges and more information will be given to employees in June, she said.
If the budget is approved, the pay raises won’t hit employees’ bank accounts until September.
“A September implementation represents the earliest possible time these adjustments can be made effective due to administrative constraints,” according to the budget.
Those constraints include updating all the positions in the city’s HR system and removing old job positions.
“Then we have to put in all of the raises,” Deacle said. “Then we have to check it to make sure it is right, because it’s people’s paychecks.”
Raleigh Police Department funding
The proposed budget doesn’t raise the tax rate. But city leaders raised the property tax last year, in part, to begin implementing the study this year.
It’s expected to cost $35.8 million to implement the plan in September, including $6.8 million to bring all employees to the new minimums. Raleigh will need more money in next year’s fiscal budget to cover the increased cost for the full year.
After last week’s budget presentation, about a dozen uniformed and plainclothes police officers huddled to discuss the proposed spending plan
“We’re somewhat disappointed,” said Matthew Cooper, a detective and president of the Raleigh Police Protective Association. “But right now ... we haven’t seen the results of the compensation study. Once we examine that and get the results of that, we’ll have a better indication about the salary.”
Many officers were hoping for a 15% pay increase, he said.
“We felt that was fairly reasonable considering our lack of competitiveness throughout our peer cities throughout the last several years,” Cooper said.
Police officers have continued to rally for pay increases year after year because the city “has not really done its job in past years to make us competitive,” Cooper said.
Police pay raises
This year’s proposed raises are higher than what’s been proposed for police in neighboring municipalities.
The city of Durham and the towns of Carrboro and Chapel Hill propose a 5% increase for police employees in their respective budgets. The town of Cary proposes a 3% pay increase.
The new starting salary for Raleigh police officers would go from $55,331 to $61,417. That would bring it past Charlotte’s starting pay of $58,623 and Greensboro’s starting pay of $59,500. Raleigh’s salary is also higher than starting pay in Winston-Salem, Fayetteville and Wilmington.
Durham’s starting pay for an officer is $54,817 but comes with a $10,000 hiring incentive for completing the Basic Law Enforcement Training (BLET) academy and all three phases of field training.
But Raleigh’s new starting salary would still lag some other Wake County municipalities’ starting pay for police.
Cary’s starts police officers at $63,502; Wake Forest, at $63,173. Holly Spring lists its starting pay for BLET graduates as
$60,000 to $63,000.
Crime in Raleigh
Public safety, police officer pay and how many police officers Raleigh needs were a focal point in last year’s municipal elections.
That’s partly because of a new group, Citizens for a Safe and Secure Raleigh, that was formed by area business leaders and former Mayors Nancy McFarlane and Smedes York.
“As Raleigh continues to grow, so too will the potential for crime and conflict like that plaguing so many of our nation’s other cities,” York wrote in a column in The N&O after last year’s election. “We’re at a crucial turning point in our city’s evolution. Raleigh should lead on public safety.”
John Cerqueria, who ran for Raleigh City Council last year, was named the group’s executive director earlier this year.
“There was a recognition that there was an attrition problem with the police force that was leaving us understaffed with low morale, as we have this population boom that would justify more police officers,” he said.
Some downtown business people were especially concerned that fear of crime has kept people from coming back to the downtown area because of the “reality of crime and the perception of crime.”
Cerqueria acknowledges recent pay raises for law enforcement but said those, while appreciated, have been mostly cost-of-living adjustments.
“We see that there are other needs, and we know that the police are not the only budget line item,” he said. “But we would argue that, really, the most fundamental function of government is to keep their citizens safe. And so there’s agreement that increased pay, increased staffing, is a need. It just gets met with the reality of having a finite budget with multiple needs.”
The group advocated for a 15% raise for police.
The Raleigh City Council will likely vote on the budget in mid-June. A public hearing is set for 7 p.m. June 3.
This story was originally published May 27, 2025 at 5:30 AM with the headline "Raleigh to raise police, city employees’ pay, but will it be competitive enough?."
