City eyes more competitive salaries for public safety officers
City officials have been working for months to figure out how to stop police and firefighters from leaving their departments, which led to a glut of overtime --
The city would have to find new funding streams or cut existing programs in the budget to pay for the changes. The actual cost of the program has yet to be decided, though there are some rough numbers that have been presented to the council.
Salary bumps, merit raises and retention bonuses for public safety officers would likely total around
Whether those amounts are feasible depends on how city officials can shift, cut and add to the budget.
"I think we will be able to. Government's responsibility is to pave your roads, pick your trash up, make sure your lights work and everything else is gravy. We have a lot of gravy in the budget," said Councilman
Every non-essential cost is on the table for cuts, Pruitt said, including nonprofits, miscellaneous money and professional services. If cuts aren't enough, raises in occupational, property and gasoline tax are also possible, he said, as last-ditch solutions.
Those numbers would allow the city to bring public safety pay in line with six similar jurisdictions:
The starting wage for a firefighter or police officer in
With the city's proposed plan, Montgomery officers would start out at about
Those numbers don't tell the whole story though, said
"If you aren't careful you can really get an apples to oranges comparison," Hamilton said. Pay amounts can also be skewed by the size of the city, he said, because some smaller municipalities have the ability to devote more of their resources toward public safety.
All the cities examined by the
There is little incentive within Montgomery's current pay structure to seek out raises, said Senior Policy Analyst
In the city's study, analysts found "several jurisdictions guarantee a 10-15 percent promotional increase in pay. Currently, the typical promotional increase within our public safety pay plan would be 2-3 percent." To address that, the study recommended that every promotion guarantee at least a 10 percent increase.
The numbers clearly show Montgomery, at
Still, the pay itself isn't a perfect comparison, Hamilton said, without comparing the benefit plans of each city,
All city workers may soon move onto the Retirement System of
"I truly believe that this is really in the right direction," said MPD Chief
City officials say Montgomery's noncompetitive pay and retirement plans has led to a shortage of public safety officers. The city's highly regarded fire department is having their officers poached by better paying municipalities. Firefighters get their training and experience in
The council has previously discussed the need to increase the amount of active police. Mayor
MFR Chief Miford Jordan said at the January meeting that his department had about 418 active firefighters, and they would like to raise that number to about 475 to operate more efficiently at their current level. But an Advertiser data request fulfilled in January showed that there was only about 385 firefighters on staff.
"One of the main things is cutting down on the demand," he said. "The overtime is good in some cases, but at the same time, we are overworking some of our personnel. They burn out, especially (with) the run volume in EMS."
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