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Winston-Salem City Council cuts firefighter vacation time in half

Fire truck parked outside of Winston-Salem City Hall
April Laissle
/
WFDD

The Winston-Salem City Council voted Monday night to reduce vacation time for firefighters.

Effective next year, accrual rates for sick and vacation leave, as well as the maximum vacation balance for city firefighters, will be cut in half.

Officials say this will bring their accrual rates more in line with those of other city employees, but it’s a change the local fire department union has pushed back against for months.

Mayor Pro Tem D.D. Adams supported the reduction, though she, like other Council members, said it was a difficult decision.

“If we, or if I, felt like that we could sustain what we have going on right now, then I would be all for it," Adams said. "But the one thing we'd have to do is we'd have to raise taxes so high that people would be down here yelling with pitchforks.”

The Council did, however, commit to completing a pay study for the fire department before the new rates go into effect.

Amy Diaz began covering education in North Carolina’s Piedmont region and High Country for WFDD in partnership with Report For America in 2022. Before entering the world of public radio, she worked as a local government reporter in Flint, Mich. where she was named the 2021 Rookie Writer of the Year by the Michigan Press Association. Diaz is originally from Florida, where she interned at the Sarasota Herald-Tribune and freelanced for the Tampa Bay Times. She holds a bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of South Florida, but truly got her start in the field in elementary school writing scripts for the morning news. You can follow her on Twitter at @amydiaze.

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