Reeves Peeler is a Raleigh native, went to Lacy Elementary, Martin Middle, Broughton High School, and NC State University. He works in affordable housing finance at First Citizens Bank and serves on the Raleigh Planning Commission. He ran for City Council At-Large in 2024 and is a former political campaign and union organizer.
Reeves spoke to City Council on March 11, 2025:
I’m here tonight to stand in solidarity with Raleigh’s Firefighters and join them in their fight for Separation Allowance. For some years now, our firefighters professional association, Local 548, have been advocating and organizing around winning a well-earned Separation Allowance policy in Raleigh’s $1.43 billion budget.
As some of you might know, firefighting is incredibly dangerous both on the job, but after retirement. Firefighters nationally get cancer at rates far higher than the average person including 1.5 times higher for non-Hodgkins lymphoma and 2 times higher for testicular cancer.
The pay study that just came back to the City of Raleigh shows that this cost for our firefighters can be funded for barely $5 million a year. If this money was put in a relatively conservative investment fund, Separation Allowance could pay for itself in 20 years.
There is plenty of precedent for this in Raleigh. Raleigh Police Department has enjoyed this benefit for decades and I believe our firefighters deserve that parity. And there is precedent for other municipalities across North Carolina, including Mebane, Gastonia, Kannapolis, Elizabeth City and Washington. Certainly these towns have fewer employees, but they also have much smaller tax bases. This amounts to less than half a penny per person on property tax. And using an average residential property tax bill in Raleigh, that comes out to roughly $10 per year per household.
I believe that’s a reasonable price to pay to have a properly funded fire department that keeps us safe, attracts sufficient firefighting staff to our amazing city, and retains experienced and healthy firefighters, so they can not just survive, but thrive in Raleigh. And we can do that by passing Separation Allowance in this year’s budget.
MORE INFO & Contact the City Council here – From LOCAL 548
If you appreciate the kind of reporting we bring to you
|
Please donate $10 or $20, Thanks for supporting |
 |