Talk to 32-year-old Hewitt police officer Mike Zahirniak and you’ll come away confident that he really likes his job. One reason is probably genetic — he hails from an area family steeped in law enforcement and military service. Another reason involves the very nature of police work.

He likes the friendliness of ordinary folks in Hewitt. He likes collaring drunk drivers “because I’ve seen the harm and tragedy they can do.” He enjoys talking with youths, even those who get into trouble: “If the kids mess up when they’re younger, they can change. They really can.”

And while there are moments when he’s had to draw his gun on duty — he thinks of one unnerving domestic disturbance call involving an armed man — he focuses on the lighter moments of police work in Hewitt, a kinetic town of 14,000. There’s the time a fellow officer pulled a teenager over for speeding about 70 mph in a 45 mph zone. The teen explained he was racing home because his mother was dying.

Hewitt officers are ordinarily sympathetic to such crises, Zahirniak assured me, but this time the officer had doubts and demanded that the youth give him his family’s phone number. Then the officer called and spoke to the mother. He explained the situation and asked if she were, indeed, dying.

“No, I’m not dying,” she said, “but my son is going to wish I was dead when he gets home.” But Zahirniak also acknowledges some unpleasant moments. In recent weeks, upset taxpayers — many of them graying, likely on fixed incomes — have vigorously protested a city proposal to raise the tax rate 4.5 cents to provide, among other things, 5 percent pay hikes for all city employees including police and firefighters. The city hasn’t given any raises in 18 months.

Adding to their outrage: a $7.9 million bond package city officials also wanted to put on the ballot this year to construct a municipal complex, even though a similar bid was rejected by voters in 2009. To complicate matters, city officials after the 2009 vote acquired land for just such a complex, arguing they wanted to secure the land now for whenever voters are agreeable. Some voters were understandably outraged.

At a public meeting last week, one resident after another expressed anger, including a gentleman who drew comparisons to the mess Washington now finds itself in over spending and taxes. He declared that “we don’t want our city to be in the same boat.”

Yet another proclaimed, referring to the economy, “No one’s getting pay raises.”

After all others had their say, Zahirniak got up and spoke of the hardships he and fellow city employees endure. That included his financial straits such as having to drop insurance on his 7-year-old son because of high premiums. He said he and his fiancée early next year expect a child who, doctors fear, may suffer Down syndrome.

The situation leaves him filled with anxiety: This fall, he’s due to deploy to Afghanistan for 10 months with the Army National Guard. He’ll possibly be in harm’s way when the baby is born. Zahirniak has been a police officer nearly four years but spent nearly nine years in the Army.

Heroes and villains  

The other night he also told city officials and protesters that if the city council didn’t want to give pay raises to employees, that was fine, that city employees will do their jobs regardless. But he said the stereotyping, sniping and vilification of city employees must stop.

In short, we shouldn’t be treating each other this way in our town.

By evening’s end, the city council wisely shelved the bond package and approved a far smaller tax hike to justify a pay raise of 3 percent rather than 5 percent. Protesters left voicing at least some satisfaction, though one — irked by Zahirniak’s defense of fellow employees — called the veteran a disgrace.

So it has come to this in a city rated by Money magazine in 2007 as one of the best places in the United States to live. The hateful rhetoric of Washington is now raised in city halls all across Texas, targeting even those who have served the public to an extent most of us are unwilling to consider.

When I met Zahirniak a few days later, he was eager to dispel any idea that Hewitt is a town as polarized as the rest of this nation. He suggested I not be misled by the comments that I heard. He even offered a rationale for why some might feel that way.

“Hewitt’s not like that at all,” he told me. “People in this town will flag us down and offer us whatever they’re barbecuing. I mean, I’ll be working a wreck and people will actually stop to bring you food. You don’t ask for it. They just do it. The ones you saw the other night are different. They’re not bad and maybe some of them are struggling. But most people here are pretty nice.”

Yes, some of what was said in this model, all-American city was hurtful and untrue. One critic suggested the city bought police SUVs “because we’re all too fat to fit in the cars,” said Zahirniak, who happens to be reed-trim.

Another critic said that if city workers wanted more money, “we needed to go to college so we could get a better job.”

Such rhetoric doesn’t reflect well on us 10 years after the 9/11 attacks. We as a nation have voiced great respect for the military personnel we’ve sent off to Afghanistan and Iraq and the police and firefighters who are our first line of defense at home.

But then talk is increasingly cheap.