BATON ROUGE - Attendees at Wednesday's Metro Council meeting cheered as the council approved a motion to give city-parish employees pay raises. 

The measure comes after the council approved pay raises for the Baton Rouge Police Department, making BRPD the highest-paid municipal police force in Louisiana. 

Constable Terrica Williams, whose department did not receive raises alongside BRPD, spoke with WBRZ and said her department had lost employees to the city police due to pay disparities. After BRPD raises and before Wednesday's vote, starting officers were making $17,000 more than constables. 

Mayor-President Sid Edwards told WBRZ that he spoke with Williams and told her that he was pushing for raises once pay bumps for BRPD were finalized. 

Edwards' item on the agenda for Wednesday included raises for constables, finance department employees, mail workers and Department of Public Works employees. It did not include raises for the constitutional offices. 

Edwards' office said his proposed plan moved funding from frozen positions into the city-parish general fund and redistributed it among employees with the lowest salaries. The pay raises will cost the city-parish $4.2 million, with an annual cost of $8 million. 

According to a 2024 pay study, the lowest-paid city-parish employees make less than $11. Edwards' plan would bump their pay 3.5% and set a minimum hourly rate of $12.53. 

Pay rises should go into effect on June 27, and employees will see raises on their paychecks in mid-July.