The Prairie Village Police Department is hoping to stay in the competitive rink when it comes to potential candidates looking to become officers.
“We’re authorized 47 officers here at the police department, and we are six short right now,” Police Chief Tim Schwartzkopf said.
Schwartzkopf said the department is looking to fill those positions and also keep up with retention.
“Some of our peers that we compete for police officers, they changed some things, kind of ramped up their compensation and so I think it's important that we stay competitive,” he said. "Competing for police officer candidates is difficult across the nation. And there's a lot of people who don't want to do this job anymore. And we just want to make sure we're attracting good people and to do that, you need to be competitive in the marketplace with pay and other compensation."
On Monday, City Council approved a preliminary measure to add roughly $228,000 to the city’s payroll in 2018.
City leaders said close to 75 percent of that money would go towards the police department.
“We really need to pay people what they're worth, otherwise you get what you pay for,” one Prairie Village resident said. “If you get unqualified individuals in any of the professions, then pay them less than they're worth. It's a pretty simple formula.”
The vote comes after a compensation study that was presented to city council in April.
“Last year, it was put into the budget for 2017 to do a compensation study, so we had a consultant that came in. It was Arthur Gallagher, it was the company who did it,” Schwartzkopf said. “Gail Meriweather, with that company, she did a compensation and a study for the city and her report came forward this Spring and she presented her findings to the city council.”
City leaders said the study showed Prairie Village employees were making about nine percent less than other city employees in surrounding areas.
“We were lagging the market a little bit in some of our positions. And while this was certainly a city-wide compensation study, the greatest impact was here at the police department,” Schwartzkopf said. “Our starting salary is very competitive, but we kind of tailed off as things went on and I'm speaking really for our police officer ranks because a lot of this compensation study and some of these changes, they're really affecting all of our non-supervisory positions here at the city. And then here at the police department, it's for our police officers and our dispatchers and the people out there doing all the work.”
If the measure is passed, city leaders said the money will come from property taxes, self-taxes, and other anticipated gross revenue. They mentioned they’re not proposing any additional tax increases with this measure.
There will be a final vote on this measure on May 15 at 7:30 p.m.
