Charlotte firefighters spent the spring telling the City Council that a budget paying them less than police for the same work was a problem the city could fix. On Monday night, the council fixed it.
In a 10-1 straw vote, the council directed City Manager Marcus Jones to adjust the proposed fiscal 2027 budget so the Charlotte Fire Department receives the same 10 percent raise already slated for Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police. The original budget gave CMPD 10 percent and CFD 7 percent — a three-point gap that had drawn firefighter protests for months. Council Member Joi Mayo, who represents District 3, cast the lone vote against.
The decision is not yet final. Straw votes direct the manager's adjustments; the FY2027 budget itself returns for formal adoption on June 8. But after more than an hour of debate, the parity question — the item firefighters had been protesting for months — is settled in everything but the official ratification.
The math the council had to solve
Jones built the original budget around a 10 percent raise for police and a 7 percent raise for fire. Firefighters argued the split treated two halves of the same public-safety mission unequally, and they brought that argument to the chamber repeatedly through the spring.
The council spent Monday's workshop working through cheaper versions of parity before settling on the expensive one. Members weighed an across-the-board 8 percent raise that would have saved the city $2.8 million, and a 7 percent version that would have saved $6.3 million. A motion to give fire a 7.5 percent ongoing raise plus a 2.5 percent one-time bump — a structure that reaches 10 percent for a single year without committing to it permanently — failed on the floor, as did an earlier parity motion.
The version that passed was the straightforward one: a hard 10 percent for both CMPD and CFD, ongoing, not a one-time bump.
"It's been a marathon, but I'm super proud of Local 660," Mike Feneis, president of the Charlotte Firefighters Association, said after the vote, according to WBTV. "I'm proud of our members, I'm proud of all firefighters in Charlotte. They showed up to show council how important that was."
Where the $4.4 million comes from
Parity is not free, and the council did not pretend otherwise. Closing the gap for the fire department costs the city $4.4 million, and the money comes almost entirely out of public-safety accounts — including the fire department's own.
The reallocation, as itemized in the city's budget adjustment, draws from three sources. The largest is $2.2 million from the proposed increase to the fire department's overtime budget, which had been set to grow by roughly $4.15 million. Another $1,859,453 comes out of the $2.95 million proposed for public-safety technology investments. The final $366,225 comes from fire department field technician positions tied to the three Operations Division chiefs.
The firefighters' raise, in other words, is funded in part by trimming the fire department's own overtime and technology lines — a trade the union accepted in exchange for the parity it had been seeking. Charlotte Fire Chief Reginald Johnson's department got the number; the budget got cuts it could absorb within public safety rather than outside it.
The vote, on the record and in the room
The transcript of Monday's workshop captures the moment plainly. After the failed motions, a member moved for a straight 10 percent for both forces. The presiding officer called for a show of hands, registered the result, and noted the single dissent — the meeting record shows the motion passing with Mayo opposed. WSOC and WBTV, reporting the same meeting, put the count at 10-1.
The council also voted to support pay parity for first responders going forward — a separate policy posture, distinct from this year's dollar figure, putting the body on record against repeating the 7-versus-10 split in a future cycle.
"Council did a great thing tonight by giving us both 10%," Feneis said, "showing the value that both police and fire have in public safety and protecting the citizens of Charlotte."
What happens next
The straw votes are direction, not adoption. The FY2027 budget — which drew more than 30 speakers at its May public hearing, nearly all of them asking for more — returns to the full council for a final vote on June 8, when the parity raise becomes official along with the rest of the spending plan. Until then, the 10 percent is a council instruction to the city manager, backed by 10 of 11 members.
The gap firefighters spent the spring protesting is, for budget purposes, closed. The ratification is a week away.