NICK GOSNELL
Hutch Post
HUTCHINSON, Kan. — The City of Hutchinson went over its agreement for 2024 with the Fraternal Order of Police at the City Council meeting on Tuesday.
"We started negotiations back on February 23," said HR Director Tom Sanders. "We had six formal session to meet and confer. On July 1, we were able to come to agreement. With the national shortage of police officers, it's been a challenging few years, in terms of putting together adequate compensation packages to attract and retain officers. This year, I think we've done a really, really good job of coming up with a good package that both sides feel really good about and also keep up with where we're at in the market today and where it's projected to go next year."
The raises for officers are significant.
"We are moving the officer scale up next year by 7.7%," Sanders said. "The top of the scale's going to move up by 10.6%. The police sergeant scale is not moving as much. It's going up 2% and the top end is going up 3.6%. There's new language that codifies management's discretion to design, alter or eliminate hiring or milestone bonuses and also to make them contingent upon a formal repayment agreement, so if an employee leaves within a certain amount of time, we could recoup some of that cost."
Another issue when new officers come in at much higher rates is wage compression, where those who have served longer are not making as much more, comparatively.
"We came up with a plan, working with the FOP, that I think addresses that in a fair and adequate way," Sanders said. "The factors that we're looking at were time in job, of course and then differences in past performance. We didn't want to wipe out those differences that employees had that were performing really well, versus those that were successful, but just not quite as high and then also recognizing prior law enforcement experience."
This agreement is already at work to help keep police in Hutchinson.
"We had requested through the city manager that we be able to implement these changes for the FOP group as soon as the FOP approved the contract, which they did right away," Sanders said. "We were able to get those implemented on July 30. I think that will really help us with current retention and recruitment."
Also, merit pay raises are increasing.
The merit pay matrix for next year is adjusted to a 4.25% overall budget, which is up from 3.5% this year," Sanders said. "The variable pay programs under Article 17, we negotiated new language with the union to allow for SRO officers to be eligible for designated unit pay, during those periods of time when they are working the full duties of a detective, and also for an extended period of time like Christmas break, summer breaks, things like that."
Sanders said that this is an aggressive package, but it is one that is necessary and needed to stay competitive with other jurisdictions.
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