Translate[Archived] Question #28: Provide a detailing of the expenditure impacts and the expenditure estimates (by start date) for the proposed adjustment scenarios under consideration by the Public Safety Workgroup.
Question:
Can you provide a detailing of the expenditure impacts of the proposed adjustment scenarios under consideration by the Public Safety Work Group(s) to address retention and attraction challenges within the City’s public safety agencies.
Response:
The Public Safety Work Groups have met, and comparator jurisdiction salary information has been reviewed. The Police Public Safety Work Group recommended an 8.15% across-the-board raise at a cost of $2.44 million in FY 2019 ($3.26 million annualized), the Fire Public Safety Work Group requested a 5% across-the-board raise of $1.60 million ($2.13 million annualized), and the Sheriff Public Safety Work Group proposed a retirement plan modification and grade reallocation for Deputy Is, Deputy IIs, and Lieutenants at a cost of approximately $1.03 million ($1.37 million annualized). The Police, Fire, and Sheriff overtime budgets would also have to be increased as well. This would set personnel cost increases at $5.07 million in FY 2019 ($6.76 million annualized), plus overtime costs. There have been significant efforts recently from neighboring jurisdictions to increase starting pay, change scheduled hours, and in some cases, accelerate multi-year public safety pay plans. As such, the City needs to improve pay for Police, Sheriff, and Fire, but the Public Safety Work Groups recommended across-the-board increase, grade reallocation, and retirement plan modification cost of at least $5.07 million is significantly more than the $1.5 million set aside in the budget, which points to a multi-year solution. It should be noted that the Public Safety Work Groups work is not completed as there are other areas of study needed to fully figure out how to improve public safety recruitment and retention capabilities.
Question:
Can you provide expenditure estimates for implementation at the beginning of the fiscal year, halfway through the fiscal year and at the beginning of the last quarter of the fiscal year?
Response:
The FY 2019 proposed budget includes $1.5 million to increase public safety recruitment and retention capabilities. The City Manager has previously suggested that if the $1.5 million were spent over of a 9-month period, starting in October, that its on-going purchasing value increases to $2.0 million.
A January 2019 public safety pay implementation would increase the annual buying power to $3.0 million and an April 2019 implementation would increase the buying power to $6.0 million.
As depicted above, an October 2018 implementation timing increases the annualized cost of the compensation increase above the $1.5 million by $0.5 million to $2.0 million, a January 2019 implementation start raises the annualized cost by $1.5 million to $3.0 million, and an April 2019 implementation raises the annualized cost by $4.5 million to $6.0 million. While staff is comfortable with an October start as the added $0.5 million cost in FY 2020 would be a manageable budget increment, any later start than October of 2018 makes the resulting FY 2020 impact much higher and not an increment from a year-to-year budget management standpoint that staff is comfortable with.