MARIETTA, Ga. — Update: The Marietta City Council voted 7-0 to put the ordinance on the agenda for their meeting on Wednesday.
Original Story:
Marietta City Council is set to discuss increasing firefighter and police pay - an issue the community is keeping a close eye on.
11Alive has been covering staffing concerns at the Marietta Police Department for weeks now. On Oct. 29, Butch Ayers, who is a member of the Georgia Association of Chiefs of Police, explained that the issues include poaching, long training periods, and pay. They are issues seen in departments nationwide.
Monday evening councilmembers are slated to discuss a potential 7 percent pay increase for police officers and firefighters.
Mel Diane, whose husband has been a Marietta Police Officer for more than 20 years, believes that could worsen the pay compression issues.
"It should be a separate policy, which is basically where your years of service determine your percentage raise each year," she said. "When you've been there for five years, you get 3%. When you've been there for 10, you start getting in a more and so on and so forth - and that's not what the city does.”
She said her husband's tenure is not reflected in his paycheck adding it's the same for firefighters.
"Just watching the department value him less and less, when it’s not in the department’s hands. It’s 100% the city’s choice," she explained. "So we now have a five-year officer who’s making 88% of my husband’s salary and a 8 year officer who is making 95% of my husband’s salary. This is not just my husband – this is several of the 22 to 24 year range officers."
Diane said that’s part of the reason why there’s a shortage of officers at the police department. She made a video highlighting the number of officers who she says have recently left.
“It’s just over a minute video of the 21 officers who have resigned in the last 11 months," she said. "The whole department is down 20%."
She added that officers never got a raise from 2008 to 2013. Her husband was one of the officers who kept working during that time.
"The city has done nothing to go back to those officers who stayed loyal to the city during that time frame and worked for no raises, doing the worst job you can imagine," she said.
In October, Marietta city officials said that the department is working to fill about 20 officer vacancies but stresses that the city is safe despite staffing levels. They added that they have offered three pay raises over the last 17 months.
But Diane said they need to match what other surrounding agencies are paying, otherwise they could lose quality officers.
“It breaks my heart. It breaks my heart to see them go out here and risk their lives every day to keep the city safe and know that they’re not getting paid even close to what just going into Cobb County would offer them," she said.
11Alive reached out to the Marietta mayor for an interview Monday morning but he did not reply. Neither did the council members we reached out to.
11Alive also filed an open records request over a week ago to get the latest staffing numbers for the police department. Those requests have not yet been fulfilled.
This story will be updated once those details become available.