The Gastonia City Council approved a 4 percent pay raise for city employees on Tuesday evening. They also voted to use a three-month window to find out how much salaries need to be adjusted for all city employees. This will delay the pay raises for police and fire employees in Gastonia. They will have a step pay plan implemented after Sept. 1, with those pay adjustments retroactive to July. General employees also could see merit increases to bring their salaries up to market scale after September.
Many Gastonia city employees were upset in June when councilman Walker Reid proposed raising firefighters salaries to 7 percent. Many attended Tuesday's meeting and had to be put in the courthouse cafeteria. A closed-circuit feed of the meeting was provided for the crowd.
The meeting was not attended by the Gastonia City Manager. Ed Munn was involved in a car wreck with a police cruiser on Marietta Street. A state trooper says Munn was making a U-turn and collided with a police care coming the opposite way. Both Munn and the officer were not seriously injured but were taken to the hospital as a precaution.
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