Their job is to protect and to serve but at what price? Officers from the union that represents the Midwest City Police Department say they are negotiating with the city but the two parties can't meet in the middle. Union officials are asking for a 4.4 percent raise, and the city has approved 4.08 percent.

  "We're 18,000 apart, we've agreed to give up two personal days off which is equal to 27,000," said Lonnie Bray, Union First, Vice President.

But city officials say it's more than $18,000. Four officers have retired this year which gives them more for the budget, but next year it will be a different story.

 "The original city's budget was indeed five million-22,000 but that was before we found out the officers would be retiring - so there's some philosophies as to what we should do with the difference," said  Tim Rundel, City of Midwest City Human Resources.

Four years ago the police and fire departments were asked to get on board with a sales tax increase that would also freeze the two departments budgets for four years. The union officers were promised to be compensated when the freeze was over but that hasn't happened.

"The metro average for raises for fire departments has been 5 percent, we received a 1 percent cost of living increase last year and now the city is proposing a 4 percent raise this year," said Ron Donnelly, Midwest City Fire Fighters IAFF Local 2066.

Donnelly says any raise is nice but that's not enough to stay competitive with other fire departments. City officials say they recognize the need to be competitive, but they're not ready to offer that amount of money.

"So do you dip into the reserves of their entire budgets to pay for these raises? Right now management and council say no," says Rundel.