Agreement Reached on Police Pay Raise; Decision Rests with Officers, Council

There was no confetti, applause or cheers in City Hall on Thursday, however the Meet and Confer team made great strides when the San Angelo Coalition of Police (SACOP) agreed to the terms of a pay raise for the San Angelo Police Department.

The agreement comes after nine long months of negotiation and debate, and if ratified and approved by City Council, will bring the salaries of the department’s officers up to 95 percent of the average salaries of their benchmark cities over the next three years.

As per the agreement, in year one the city will increase the salaries to 88.5 percent of their benchmarks. Currently, officers lie between 82 percent and 84 percent of those averages, depending on which step they are currently in, SACOP President Korby Kennedy explained. In year two, salaries will increase to 91.75 percent and in year three to 95 percent.

The San Angelo Police Department functions on a 13-step program, which basically helps the department determine where an officer stands on a pay scale.

“We are in a step plan program,” Kennedy explained. “Every other city employee is on a pay range. Basically in civil service, we have to pay everybody the same. I can’t pay a 10-year officer the same as I do a one-year officer. All of the one-year officers have to be paid the same and all of the 10-years have to be paid the same. That’s why we have a step plan and our step plan allows for about 2.3 percent in between the steps. The step is actually just the number of where their pay grade is. It’s just based on a years of service type thing.”

When the city initially proposed to freeze the steps, discontent was heard from many young officers who tied the step to seniority and rank. Most senior officers can’t be stopped in their steps because they’re at the top anyway, Kennedy explained, but said that even with the freeze officers will make more money.

Lisa Marley, Director of Human Resources for the City of San Angelo, clarified the issue with the steps by explaining that an officer’s annual raise was always a set amount, it was just a matter of whether it was divided up and how it was labeled.

“Traditionally, the way we’ve done in the past in some contracts, they would get a pay increase and a step increase,” Marley said. “What we would do is we would take the money for the raises and split it: so much for the pay increase and so much for the step, and it was all the same dollar figure. In this case, it’s just easier administratively if everyone stays in the same step, and the steps don’t equate anymore to how many years of service.”

Past freezes on step progression and a shrinking of the scale from 25 to 15 and now down to 13 steps has affected how the steps relate to seniority, Kennedy said, meaning that while the step was once equivalent to years served, alterations to the program have gotten those numbers off-kilter so that they no longer correlate. Kennedy said the department would like to get those back on track, but the movement in the pay scale toward the benchmarks takes first priority.

“Under our current contract you have a guy at step four and he wants to be at step seven, and that’s understandable, but in this current proposal, he’ll be equal in pay to a step 11,” he said. “So that’s why it’s not that important right now, but when we get the paperwork where it should be and we get the steps where they should be, then it’s just an equal progression.”

Because each city with a step plan in their police department functions differently and on different ranges, the agreed upon proposal will adjust the midpoints of the PD’s salaries—or step seven of 13—to 95 percent. There is an approximate 2.3 percent difference between each of the SAPD’s steps, and adjusting the midpoint will allow the city to more equally distribute the funds throughout the department.

In addition to the three-year pay raise proposal, SACOP agreed to an additional 2.5 percent contingency for the second and third years, which would be added on top of the sums allocated in the contract in order to compensate for movements in the salaries of the benchmark cities.

“Years two and three we’ve added a growth factor,” Kennedy said, noting that the agreement bases the increases on the current salaries of the benchmarks. “Making the assumption that our benchmarks in those years are also going to move. If we’re at 95 percent based on today’s numbers and they move 6 percent, then we’re not at 95, we’re still back at 88 or whatever. So we’ve taken into that factor and added a growth factor and that growth factor is capped at 2.5 percent.”

The 2.5 percent cap was a sticking point for SACOP on Thursday, who had been pushing for 3 percent since the last meeting. Initially, the city offered only 2 percent, but the entities ultimately met in the middle.

Due to the weight of the contract and the limitations on the city budget, the Meet and Confer team agreed to further drop a monetary incentive on the city's proposed physical fitness plan, which initially was planned to provide small compensation for officers that excel in physical training.

“Because we put all the money into the pay part of the contract, we felt there wasn’t enough money to also provide incentives to physical fitness program,” Marley explained. “So our proposal at the last meeting was to keep the physical fitness program in but not to have any incentives attached to it.”

On July 18, the subcommittee will meet again to work out the language of the contract so that it may be submitted to the officers of the SAPD for a vote. The subcommittee’s progress will be further discussed in a regular Meet and Confer meeting scheduled for July 21 at 1 p.m.

If the contract is approved by officers, it will go before City Council. If not, the negotiations will have to begin again.