We have heard that argument that professional baseball players and football players make millions and head to the bank celebrating every time they get a paycheck, while our heroes — our teachers, soldiers, police officers and fire fighters make a humble salary. We cannot change that our society values one over the other, though one group we take for granted.

We take for granted the heroes. We take for granted that we can make one phone call to a three-digit number and “poof” magically someone is there to save us.

There are firefighters that spend nights away from their children just to make sure your house doesn’t burn down. Police officers respond to calls nightly to keep our neighborhoods safe. They respond to calls when someone suspicious is walking the streets and they come just the same when your house alarm sounds off.

These Selma city employees are vital lifeblood to our community and we would not survive without them. Yet, our money isn’t where our mouth is.

It seems that other cities pay their police and fire workers more than the going Selma rate.

At Tuesday’s public safety committee meeting, councilman Samuel Randoph proposed the idea of finding a way to increase city revenue, so that we can in turn increase the salaries of officers before we lose them to other cities.

Selma needs these officers and we could not agree more. We challenge the city council to come up with a creative idea to keep our officers happy, healthy and their salaries competitive with other surrounding areas.