Wilmington Police Department patrol staffing levels and pay scale structures continue to be issues for which Wilmington City Council and city staff attempt to find solutions.
During city council’s annual retreat Monday, Nov. 24, council tentatively approved funding for eight new detectives per the recommendation from a staffing study recently completed for WPD. The total cost for hiring eight new detectives is $816,680 with a recurring annual cost of $524,800. Four of those positions will be funded in the current fiscal year’s budget with over hire funds. The other four will be included in the fiscal year 2015-16 budget.
WPD Chief Ralph Evangelous presented city council with needs for 26 new uniform patrol positions in addition to the eight detective positions overall and demonstrated how the city could fund additional officers one district per year.
“They could fund them all, which I don’t think will happen,” Evangelous said after Monday’s retreat. “They could fund one district one year and another district the next year, so there are options there for them.”
City council will have to formally approve the eight new detective positions at one of its upcoming regular meetings.
While Evangelous said the eight new detectives were a step in the right direction, solving the department’s pay scale issue is another matter.
“I think it is very positive but I think what is equally important is the fact that we need to address the pay structure and I made that perfectly clear to them,” he said. “It is a structural problem that causes compression within the ranks. People get promoted and you either can’t give them a pay raise, which I won’t do, or I give them a pay raise and that jumps them over guys who have been doing that job for a number of years, which is inherently unfair.”
Evangelous said another example of one of the pay scale imbalances within WPD is often the officers recently promoted to lieutenant are paid less than some of the sergeants they are supervising for roughly the same amount of time worked.
Wilmington budget director Lynn Heim said the additional funding spent this fiscal year on smoothing the department’s pay scale helped, but the effort needs to continue into fiscal year 2015-16. Heim said the city needs to continue its commitment to move WPD employees to the market rate, tighten wage scales especially in lower ranks and recognize employees for performance whether they are above or below the market rate.
Councilmen Kevin O’Grady and Charlie Rivenbark said the pay scale imbalances were an issue of both funding and funding allocation.
“I have talked to firemen, I have talked to policemen, and it never changes,” Rivenbark said. “The money is important and it is probably going to take some money, but we have got to figure out a way to fix it. I don’t know what we do but every year we have this same conversation.”
City council will continue its discussion of the WPD pay scale throughout the planning of its fiscal year 2015-16 budget, which will begin July 1, 2015.
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