Tuesday night’s budget public hearing before Roanoke Roanoke Rapids City Council drew several speakers who supported increased pay for city employees.

The public hearing was part of the budget process and comes before the council ultimately decides whether to adopt the proposed $17,653,726 financial plan for the upcoming fiscal year at its June 20 meeting.

While city employees are getting a 5 percent cost of living adjustment, speakers said more needs to be done.

Dana Langley told the council, “I’m just kind of concerned because I want to know what can be done for our police officers that are leaving because they can make more money in Halifax County or Nash County or other counties. They’re not making that money here to keep our guys.”

Langley said her concern was if the police department continues to lose officers “our guys are going to be on the streets by themselves with no backup, no nothing.”

The mother of a police officer, Langley said, “Believe you me, mama bear listens to the scanner so I hear the calls. The radio system is not good. A lot of times they can’t hear each other and they get stuck in situations.”

Langley said her concerns were not just about officers but firefighters as well. “These people go out every day and they put their lives on the line. They walk out of their house, they tell their families goodbye and you don’t know if they’re coming back. These people do this every day.”

Choking back tears, she said, “I just feel like their families and their jobs need to be looked at because if something happens at any of our homes what do we want? We want them to be there. We don’t want them late because one has to come across town because we don’t have any more police officers.”

She said the city is losing firefighters as well. “When one of our houses catches on fire and all of sudden we don't have any firefighters because they’re fighting another fire somewhere.”

Langley said it is a matter which needs to be addressed to keep employees and give them more pay. “We can serve our community like we need to serve our community. I’ve lived here all my life. We the people are comforted to know that our guys are here and if someone breaks into their business or robs us, we’ve got those guys to come help. We don’t have to wait for them to come from way over on Bolling Road to get to us.”

Mayor Emery Doughtie told Langley he could assure her concerns have been looked at. “We’re trying to address that some in the budget. It’s a difficult task and tonight is not the night we will solve that problem … All our people are important and we value all of them and we’ll try to make the best use of our taxpayer’s money. We’ve just not had any revenue increase. They can go to other places and make more money.”

Replied Langley: “I just think it’s sad because a lot of the police officers here graduated from our high school. They’re home people. They know our town. They know everything — same with the firefighters. There’s nothing they don’t know that we could just let them go, just let them walk out.

“It’s sad. You could raise my taxes, I don’t care. The other people may care but I don’t care because I want to see this town, Roanoke Rapids, I want to see it flourish, I want to see it grow and not only that I want to see the people that need the money get the money. Everybody needs money, grant it, but these guys are leaving because there’s nothing.”

Councilman Wayne Smith, directing his comments to Doughtie, said, “We’re not the only town that’s losing police officers. I can understand what the lady’s talking about but we’re not able to pay them.”

Smith said the city has two choices — raise taxes 4 or 5 cents or the city can lay off other personnel to make up their salaries. “Do the officers in the police department want us to lay off other employees so they can get a raise? That’s the question facing us. We’ve worked hard on the budget and we want to try to do the best thing we can.”

Other than the valuation, it’s been about 10 years since the city raised the tax rate, Smith said.

Brandon Thorton, who works for the sanitation department, told the council, “The firefighters and the police officers, they need a raise as well as sanitation. They come to your house on calls and we’re at your house once a week. The guys on the back of that truck are behind that truck every week and every day. The smells that come off that truck it’s hard to deal with. A lot of people can’t do it.”

Thornton, who runs the boom truck, said, “We work very hard at what we do each and every week. It’s an eight-hour shift and we work it out most days the whole eight hours. Right now a lot of us feel we’re underpaid and nobody pays attention to what we do. This raise would be very good for not only us at the sanitation department, police department and fire department but I also think the city as a whole because it will bring more people back to the community who are from here and people who are not from here it will bring them into the community because now the community is giving more money away so you’ll have more people coming in.”

Doughtie told Thorton, “I know you don’t get much appreciation but we do appreciate it very much. If you think trash pickup is not important you go a term or two and it doesn’t get picked up it gets real important real fast.”

Lakeisha Jones, the senior equipment operator for public works, has 23 years of service with the city. “I’m here for a raise. I’m all for a raise. I’ve met a lot of people and I know a lot of people and I recommend we need a raise. It’s been a long time and we need a raise.”