Another week and again we want to take flowers or cookies or meals to the Wake Forest Police Department. We have a sick feeling in the pit of our stomachs about the violence against police. We want to cocoon the officers in bubble wrap to keep them safe.
But we cannot protect our police; they protect us and will continue to do so. What we can do is to honor them and the other men and women who have dedicated their lives to public service, our fire fighters, our school teachers, our town employees. We can honor them by making it possible for them to live with their families in the town they serve.
With the exception of a few top staff, including Town Manager Kip Padgett, Police Chief Jeff Leonard and Fire Chief Ron Early, most police officers, firemen, teachers and town employees do not live in Wake Forest because they cannot afford to.
This is a great loss to Wake Forest because those men and women – along with all the others who are in the same wage brackets – are the ones usually on hand to volunteer when there is a need or a community event, turn out for patriotic events and instill their solid values in their families. We need them in our town and have had them in years past.
Can we forget Tommy Putnam, an outstanding member of the army of volunteers who swarmed through town, helping their neighbors after the disastrous Hurricane Fran which hit the night of Sept. 5 and 6 in 1996? Putnam, a lineman in the town electric department, had a tree down on his house, but he moved to his mother’s house and worked two-and-a-half weeks before fixing his own house. “The stuff I lost was just a drop in the bucket,” he said. “Those other people lost some beautiful homes. What I was doing was just wome way to help these people get their homes back together. I didn’t mind working for the people of Wake Forest because they paid my salary. If it weren’t for the people of Wake Forest, I wouldn’t be the person I am today. They’ve always bent over backwards for me.”
Without affordable housing we might lose out on someone like Henry Love Miller, who came to town from Texas in 1924 with nothing in the bank, began working in a local auto repair shop, saved until he could buy the local Ford dealership on South White Street in 1940 then the local oil dealership in 1945. He lived for years in a modest house on Wait Avenue while he was elected mayor for three terms, served on most local boards including the board overseeing the town library. He donated land for the hospital on South Allen Road and the park on South Franklin Street that is named for him. In his will he left substantial donations to the library, the Trentini Foundation, the fire department and the Rolesville and Wake County EMS. A later distribution includes over $30,000 waiting to be used when the county renovates the current library.
We need people who are in all the wage brackets because they will enrich our community life and be our good neighbors. With all the new subdivisions, we are in danger of losing that mix of incomes, outlooks, life experiences and talent.
There was a time when our fire department was staffed by volunteers who lived in town or nearby, a time when we knew all the police officers because they were neighbors and had lived in town for years.
We cannot return to the 1980s, but we can in 2016 and years afterward work to make Wake Forest more inclusive for all people. And we can work to make it possible for police officers, fire fighters, teachers and town employees to live, if they choose, close enough to their work so they can enjoy a reasonable amount of leisure and family time.
How to attack the problem? The town board can rescue that portion of its strategic plan that calls for affordable housing from the shadows where it has been lingering and make it a top priority. The commissioners and mayor can hold public input meetings, consult experts, search for funding, and come up with a plan. Local builders can become involved as well as local groups, including churches.
We just have to want to do it.
2 Responses
This was a letter I wrote to the N&O pertaining to the article about first responders having to live an hour away from the communities they serve. That may not be the case in Wake Forest at the moment but the matter of sustaining a vital force remains the same:
“I find it unconscionable that a first-responder must drive as much as an hour to get home after serving a community they can’t afford to live in. This is valuable time they should be relaxing with their family and friends. It is part of the coveted wind down that allows each of us to “get up and do it again”. Add to this the need for these community servants to supplement their incomes with part time jobs is an indictment of the very citizens they have taken an oath to serve and protect. To put this into perspective we only have to understand that we are talking about ” 1 penny per $100 of property valuation ” equations. Amphitheaters, greenways, fireworks, street fairs are all well and good. But they only achieve their intended effect when there is a well rested and adequately compensated public safety contingency at the ready!
While I feel that most police officers do deserve more money with the rising risk of their profession, lets remember that Wake Forest starting salary with no degree and no experience, starts at $40,000/year. That is approximately $20/hour. Compare that to a teacher for wake county that requires a Bachelor’s degree, and who starts out around $36,000 and likely over $20,000 in debt.
I’m all for helping vital service personnel, with good moral character or any upstanding citizen, with low interest loans such as Habitat for Humanity does. There are options for those starting out such as a townhome, smaller house, etc. Just as a ball park figure using Bankrate calculator, $40,000 income will qualify one for $145,000 loan. We have not had our values increase as much as Cary or other areas in Raleigh, so Wake Forest does have some areas that are affordable. Realtor.com has many listings that do qualify for those lower priced homes, and most of them look better than my 1st home which had to be a fixer upper because I couldn’t qualify for anything else.
Often the problem is that the credit rating is marginal or bad, which very few banks or organizations are willing to take a risk on. Perhaps free financial planning education or buying homes courses along with low interest loans for certain service personnel will go much farther?