Things were tense at the Danville City Council meeting last night as multiple members of the Danville Fire Department and their families addressed the council again about the issue of firefighter pay. A pay study in late 2022 revealed that the starting pay for firefighters in Danville is almost 20% below the market average.

Captain Tom Collins told the council about the departure of several firefighters to take better pay elsewhere and called on the council to address it.

“What we need is for one of you, one of you councilman to just stand up and do what each and every one of you know is right,” said Collins.

The city is in the process of another pay study. City Manager Ken Larking discussed why the second pay study is important and why the city has to let the budget process play out before addressing pay.

“If you give a raise in one year using one time money, not knowing for sure that you’ll have the revenue in the upcoming years to pay for it then you’re faced with a tough decision,” said Larking, “the tough decision to either cut services, which often means reducing employees, laying people off, or ask people to take pay cuts.”

Larking added that the City should have a picture of it’s budget in March and can start to look at how they can fix pay. Vice Mayor Dr. Gary Miller and Councilman Lee Vogler added they didn’t think the second pay study was necessary.