19 - Memo to GB - Proposed FY24-25 Budget - July 2024 (002)

Home Browse Search

The mission of the City of Paris is to serve with professionalism and integrity, promote a safe and prosperous community for all citizens, and provide efficient and effective services for an excellent quality of life. Budget Message Toaccomplish the Financial Policy stated above, wehave carefully considered the priorities for the Proposed FY24/25 Budget.While there are many important tasks, projects, and programs that can be singled out for discussion, the following is a breakdown of the most notable priorities pursued due to the level of impact they had to the overall budget. 1.Police Department Pay Increases –On May 13, 2024, the City Council directed that increasing the pay plan for our sworn officers be the number one priority for the FY24/25 budget. The City has five ranks of sworn officers below the Chief of Police:those being Police Officer, Sergeant, Lieutenant, Captain and Assistant Chief.Each of these have seniority levels between Year 0 (first year in rank) to Year 14.While we have successfully maintained staffing levels in the upper four ranks, we continue to be down a significant number in our Police Officer rank which directly impacts our service to the community. The Police Department is governed under Chapter 143 of the Texas Local Government Code, otherwise known as Civil Service. While over the past four years,the City has made great strides in improving its overall compensation package for the Police Department, further measures need to be taken to attract and retain officers, particularly in light of our local competition via the County Sheriff Office and four Independent School Districts (ISDs). Our local competition has likewise taken measures to improve their compensation package over the recent years; this in combination with a completely different workloadrequirement, places the City of Paris in a tough spot to rebuild our numbers.We have also seen our greatest vulnerability for losing officers occurs within the first 6 years as our local competition is more competitive in this price range than against our higher seniority levels and ranks.Having addressed sign-on bonuses, improved certification pay, lateral pay consideration, and more, the City Council has determined that further measures regarding base pay need to be taken. While limitations due to SB2 and maintaining other departmental operations are a factor, we have drafted a proposed FY24/25 budget that will increase the starting pay of Police Officers from $56,000.00 to $66,000.00. Likewise, toprevent compression among the ranks, while still being mindful of our financial constraints throughout the General Fund, we have implemented increases through all the ranks, but at a de- escalating sliding scale. In short, the Police Officer Year 0 will see a roughly 18% increase(before OT), the Assistant Chief Year 14 will see a roughly 2% increase, with every other rank and seniority level in between deescalating from bottom to top. To financially accomplish our goals with the Police pay, we have once again unbudgeted mostof the remaining vacant police positions, which is similar to the practice we have done each of the past fouryears in order to accomplish our budgetary goals. However, we will continue to seek out and hire new officers as quickly as possible to fillup the entire vacancy list until we are fully staffed. Given historically we have been unsuccessful in filling these vacant positions, to continually budget for them while trying to maintain a balanced –and tight –budget with pay adjustments for our employees, has become challenging. Therefore, in order to offer the pay increases we have proposed to the police department, we are going to take advantage of this available budget room within the vacant positions to increase our pay for existing police positions (retain), which we hope will further draw more applicants (attract and hire). Should we successfully hire more officers, we will simply have to amend our budget and account for it in FY25/26and beyond, which is the ultimate intended conclusion –to be at full staff. Given the hiring process takes many months, the financial risk to the City in FY24/25seems relatively low. This is a departure from our typical methodology of keeping several vacant positions budgeted, however, we need this funding to implement yet another financial strategy to attract and retain officers to begin filling these vacant positions as soon as possible. It must be noted that the un-budgeting of vacant officer positions was done strictly to offset the above stated Page 6of 18