15-17 - Police Compensation-Recruitment-Retention

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To offer moving expenses up to $1,000.00, that would be — at most, 17 positions x $1,000.00 = $17,000.00. Not only do the same impacts discussed with the sign -on bonus apply here, but so does the requirement that one must live more than an hour away, thus must move to Paris (within one hour) to apply and receive this reimbursement. Once again, this should have a negligible impact to any one Fiscal Year. To make the adjustment in Certification Pay as discussed above will be immediate and more impactful to the FY22/23 and subsequently FY23/24 budget. Given the above identified numbers in each category, we estimate an increase of approximately $120k to the budget (between certification pay increases and the associate impact to Social Security, TMRS, and Medicare payments). This does not take into account the hiring of 17 new officers, however, you do not receive your Basic Certification until one year in service, thus the added impact of these new 17 officers (as soon as they can be hired), will not be felt until future fiscal years. We cannot however only apply the new scale to new hires, and we are also using this increase as a means of retaining our officers and staying at or above comparable to local competition. So this scale would apply to all existing sworn personnel. If we can find a way to attract and keep new officers for the first few years, we believe our seniority plan, promotion opportunities, plus increases to certification pay will make it very difficult for new officers to choose to move to local competition on account of compensation (as it stands today with local entities). In addition, if we can find a way to attract and keep experienced officers, this will bring faster relief to the department and savings in academy expense, OT and the effects of burnout in our officers. While we are currently one-fourth the way through our existing fiscal year, and even though we did not budget for the added certification pay, sign -on bonus, moving expenses, or lateral seniority pay, it is our opinion that our situation is critical and given we have vacant funded positions in the department, we know FY22/23 can handle the increase and we will work to mold this in during the FY23/24 budget process. Unfortunately, to not make any financial changes, despite their budget impact, may result in the loss of more officers and the continuation of our disappointing testing and hiring results. OPTIONS: Approve the necessary ordinances and resolutions to: a. Authorize lateral seniority pay for new experienced officers. b. Increase the sign -on bonus from $5,000.00 to $10,000.00 and apply it to all first- time candidates, whether existing certified or not. c. Offer up to $1,000.00 in moving expenses for those who live beyond 1 hour from work, thus must move within 1 hour of work.