Alan Tharp: Police, firemen also deserve raises

Regarding the Jan. 18 news article “Raleigh boosts pay nearly 15% for lowest-level city workers”: It is great that the Raleigh City Council increased the wages of the lowest-paid city workers. Now it needs to do the same for the police and firemen.

The city council has been stonewalling on this issue for months saying that it wants to wait until a study on compensation begun in August 2015 is complete. Instead it should consider and vote on Councilman David Cox’s earlier proposal that the firemen and police be provided with some salary increase now with the remainder to be added when the compensation study is completed.

The article stated that police and firemen in Raleigh have “the lowest starting salaries among Wake County’s 12 municipalities.”

I had a 911 event last year and firemen were the first responders. Raleigh needs a motivated, dedicated, and appropriately compensated group of first responders.

This story was originally published January 21, 2017 at 3:11 PM with the headline "Alan Tharp: Police, firemen also deserve raises."