It’s been three months since the Town of Summerville approved a salary raise for its first responders.
Summerville Town Council voted in April to increase the salary for both police officers and fire department to keep them from taking higher paying jobs elsewhere.
The salary adjustment went into effect on July 1. Both the Summerville police and fire chiefs can attribute the pay increase to success.
Summerville Police Chief Jon Rogers said since this has been approved, the turnover rate has gone down and the morale has gone up.
With this salary adjustment, an entry-level police officer salary would go up an average of about $2700.
In 2017, about 25 percent of police officers and firefighters left their jobs, some of them going to other departments where they could make more money, according to a town compensation study.