Murfreesboro to increase pay for all emergency responders

MURFREESBORO, Tenn. (WKRN) — The city of Murfreesboro has approved a substantial pay increase for their public safety personnel.

Murfreesboro police, fire, and paramedics will soon see an increase in their yearly salaries as the city works to retain more of their recruits.

“We have such a good training program that people were coming and training here, they were working here for a couple of years, and then they were being poached by other organizations to leave,” Murfreesboro mayor Shane McFarland told News 2. “We really wanted to be able to fix that.”

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The raises will increase yearly pay for Murfreesboro police officers by over $3,000, firefighters by about $6,000 at minimum, and paramedics by up to $12,000.

“Over 96 percent of our calls now for fire and rescue are for the rescue portion; we don’t have a lot of fires anymore,” McFarland said. “When someone’s in an accident, our first responders, typically the fire department, are the first ones that are there. We wanted to incentivize EMTs and we wanted to incentivize paramedics.”

On top of pay raises, McFarland said that the city is also looking at adding new benefits like expanded vacation and sick time, plus upfront vacation.

“We’re really making sure that, as a city, we’re doing everything we can to get the best to provide the services to our residents,” McFarland said.

Overall, McFarland believes that these pay adjustments will show their personnel in uniform, especially police officers, that Murfreesboro values their work.

“You’re never going to hear me say anything bad about the men and women that work with our police department. That’s a tough job. Their mistakes are very public,” McFarland said. “I think it comes from the city council leadership, it comes from our administration, that we’re going to be there for our law enforcement officials.”

By comparison, Murfreesboro Police are set to make more at the entry level ($65,625 a year) than at departments in Franklin or Clarksville.

The money for the raises will come from $4.1 million. That money was saved by the city and reallocated. The pay increases will take effect at the start of the 2025 fiscal year.

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