Burlington council pushes review of police, firefighter pay competitiveness

Burlington’s budget debate turned into a direct warning about public-safety staffing when Councilman Jeff Smythe pressed city leaders to compare police and firefighter pay against nearby agencies and stop losing trained people to better-paying departments.

Smythe, a former Burlington police chief who was sworn onto City Council on December 2, 2025, argued that the city needed more than occasional raises. City records say he worked 35 years in law enforcement, including eight years as Burlington police chief and five years as chief in Show Low, Arizona, and he used that experience to frame pay as a retention problem, not just a line item. The council responded by backing a request for administrators to develop a better system for tracking salaries across agencies.

The discussion landed inside a larger budget picture that already had pressure points. Burlington’s FY 2025-2026 budget covered July 1, 2025 through June 30, 2026 and included no property-tax rate change, a 3% valuation growth assumption, a $10-a-month sanitation fee increase, a 3% sales-tax increase and a 5% water-and-sewer rate increase. In the budget presentation, police were funded at about $27.6 million and fire at about $12.4 million. City staff said personnel accounted for about 70% of the general fund budget, which made labor costs one of the biggest forces shaping the city’s spending plan.

That also meant the city was already planning some pay movement. The proposed budget included a 2.3% developmental increase for police on top of a 3% cost-of-living adjustment for most employees, but Smythe’s argument was that Burlington still needed a systematic comparison with surrounding agencies to see how far behind it had fallen. Chief Alan Balog has led the Burlington Police Department since June 2023, and Matt Lawrence is listed as fire chief for the Burlington Fire Department.

The concern has surfaced before. In 2021, Burlington commissioned a police salary study through the Piedmont Triad Regional Council, and the council later approved about $1.3 million in annual raises for officers and dispatchers. That review found Burlington was competing in a very aggressive labor market that stretched beyond Alamance County into Greensboro and Wake County, including Cary and Apex. Reports from that period also said some former Burlington officers left for the Alamance County Sheriff’s Office even when the move meant lower pay, underscoring how department culture, scheduling and career paths can matter alongside salary.

The latest tax debate added another layer. On May 5, 2026, city manager Bob Patterson said about 4 cents of a proposed 7-cent property-tax increase would cover voter-approved 2024 bond debt, while the other 3 cents would help absorb inflationary pressures affecting public safety spending. For Burlington, the question is no longer whether police and fire pay matters, but whether the city will make competitiveness a standing policy before vacancies and turnover reach residents first.