Thursday night’s review of the police budget turned into an examination of the salaries of the entire city staff and an exploration of a difficult question: Are police officers sufficiently different from other Henderson employees to merit unique treatment on pay and benefits?
Police Chief Glen Allen, fresh off accepting another resignation Thursday, told the City Council’s Finance and Intergovernmental Relations Committee that he’s frustrated enough at the city’s inability to keep sworn police officers that he’s almost ready to accept a radical solution: allowing the police force to shrink by attrition and using the money saved to improve the compensation package for the remaining officers.
Henderson’s trained police officers are a valuable commodity and know it, and jurisdictions that pay more are happy to scoop them up once they have some experience.
“The regional chiefs always pat me on the back and say, ‘Thanks for training your officers so well,’ ” Allen said.
The police chief said the city has spent more than $1 million since 1997 to train officers who no longer work for Henderson. That’s money from which the city draws no benefit.
“Let’s give up some people on attrition, and let’s tell people we’re not going to be able to provide the level of service,” Allen said. “We’re so low-compensated … we can’t keep our employees.”
By accepting reality, the chief said, he could redirect some salary money to increase pay or insurance benefits or whatever else would make officers want to stay.
“We’ll always do the best we can with what we’ve got,” Allen said. “I’m proud of what they try to do.”
City Manager Eric Williams has proposed giving the Police Department 2 percent more in the fiscal year beginning July 1 than in the current year, but that increase is $329,000 below Allen’s request. The chief hasn’t seen details on what Williams proposes to cut, but Allen said most of the budgeted increase will go toward group insurance, fuel costs and the cumulative effect of the merit pay increase the city provided this year.
Compared with other cities, “we are not the top, but we are not the bottom” for police salaries, FAIR Committee Chairman Bernard Alston said.
But Allen said: “I would contend that you cannot find another department of our size and service area that pays less than we do, from top to bottom, with the exception of the Vance County Sheriff’s Office.”
Allen’s suggestion to help recruit and retain officers is for Henderson to increase the pay ranges for each pay grade for all city employees by 3 percent for the first time since Jan. 1, 2002. That move wouldn’t automatically increase many people’s pay — only those in the bottom 3 percent of the ranges — but it would boost the starting salaries for police officers and others.
“We did it through the ’90s, and then the budget crisis hit, and we stopped,” Allen said. “Sooner or later, we’re going to have to play a lot of catch-up ball.”
The chief said the pay for Henderson police starts at a laughably low level now and never catches up to other forces in the region. Police officers can get a pay raise by going to Oxford, Warrenton, Louisburg, Roxboro, Wake Forest, Franklinton, Franklin County, Granville County or Warren County.
“I just want to be competitive” with those departments, Allen said.
Council member Mary Emma Evans asked whether the council could raise police salaries without giving citywide raises. Legally, the answer is yes, but Alston said he would have philosophical problems with such a pay plan.
The city’s acting finance director, Peggy McFarland, warned that raises for only one department would likely lead to resignations elsewhere in the city government. But Evans doubted that would be a serious problem because so many people in Henderson are looking for work.
“I would argue that police jobs are different from some other jobs,” Allen said. “If I have a position that’s vacant, from the time it takes me to identify new candidates to the time I can put him in a police car alone takes anywhere from a year to 14 months.” By comparison, the chief said, Public Works Director James Morgan can fill a vacancy in a week.
Williams warned that a raise for police only would cause a chain reaction. First the firefighters would ask for a comparable raise because they also risk their lives for public safety. Then would come the sanitation workers, whose jobs involve a large number of injuries and whose status Evans has championed.
“They’re providing a service that is directly related to the health, safety and welfare of the community,” Williams said.
“It’s not my assertion that a police officer’s job is more important than any other function,” Allen said. “Police officers are different in the training and education that we have to have. … It’s not an hourly wage job. These officers have got to be prepared to go over there to the courthouse and match wits with UNC law grads.” (One of those UNC law grads serving as defense attorneys is the FAIR chairman, Alston.)
Council member Mike Rainey agreed that police officers have a unique role. “If I have someone breaking into my store, I’m going to call a policeman, not an accountant.”
Rainey also said: “It is a job that’s different in that he puts his life on the line. A flushing toilet doesn’t shoot back at you.”
Evans suggested that a pay raise could be targeted at the lower pay grades in many departments, in the belief that departmental managers are paid well enough. Allen did not agree with her on that count; he said Henderson’s police captains are underpaid for the work they do and the responsibility they hold.
Assistant City Manager Mark Warren said the cost of boosting all employees to at least the midpoint of their pay rangers would be half a million dollars. Doing some calculations on the fly, he also said a 2 percent raise for all city employees would cost about $200,000, including $157,000 from the general fund.
“Keeping the ranges artificially low to keep them closer to the midpoint isn’t a good idea either,” Allen said.
Under the city’s pay grades, a police officer I is at the same level as a firefighter I and a treatment plant operator III.
“The problem is that our ranges have not been adjusted sufficiently to keep up with a competitive market,” Williams said, but the relative salaries for various city jobs are equitable.
Police officers do benefit more than other city employees from the educational incentives the municipal government offers, as well as a career development program. And when the city eliminated its contribution to employees’ 401(k) plans, police officers continued to receive the benefit under state law.
But little that Henderson does for employees stands out from other cities.
“Most of the innovative things that we have done to help balance out the lagging salaries are becoming more and more common,” Williams said.
The Police Department is the city’s biggest, and Allen said he could leverage that size to shift money between budget line items and give his officers raises without adding a dime to the bottom line. He said he could get away with such financial juggling in the short term without affecting the service the Police Department delivers.
The problem again is one of fairness, the chief said. Having 66 full-time employees and significant capital and equipment budgets provides flexibility to the Police Department that many city departments lack. The Engineering, Human Resources, Planning and Community Development, Finance, and Code Compliance departments combined are budgeted for about one-third as many people as the Police Department.
Allen said after the meeting that he has no flexibility to counter higher salary offers from other cities. All he can do to keep officers is offer better assignments and appeal to the desire of people who live in Vance County to work here.
“They are marketable commodities. They can go elsewhere,” Allen said. “I don’t think we have a lot of employees in other departments going to other municipalities for higher-paying jobs. I’m losing them constantly.”
He has four frozen positions, three open positions, and three or four officers shopping their services right now, the chief said.
The council members made no decisions Thursday but left the meeting willing to consider more budget flexibility for the Police Department.