AGENDA DATE: 9/5/2018
TITLE:
Title
Public Safety Pay Plan
BODY
SUBJECT/PROPOSAL/REQUEST: Request approval of Public Safety Pay Plan
ITEM TYPE: Regular Action Item
STAFF CONTACT(S): Richardson, Walker, Kamptner, Gerome, Robb
PRESENTER (S): Lorna Gerome, Dana Robb, Brooke Conover
LEGAL REVIEW: Yes
REVIEWED BY: Jeffrey B. Richardson
BACKGROUND: Human Resources conducts position classification reviews in each department on a rotating basis. Public Safety departments were last reviewed in 2012 and are on the schedule for review this year. Based on this review, staff recommends implementing step scales for most of the sworn/essential positions in these four departments.
Starting in July 2017, a team of representatives from Police, Fire-Rescue, Emergency Communications Center, Sheriff, and Human Resources met frequently to create an equitable and predictable public safety pay scale structure for each department to attract and retain quality talent. The following principles guided the work in developing the pay plans and standard operating procedures (Attachment A):
• Create and design pay scales that value the contributions of our employees.
• Create and design pay scales that are competitive with our market.
• Where it makes sense, have consistency across all public safety pay scales (i.e., same step increases, include equivalent positions when possible).
• Create pay scales that are easy to administer and explain.
The team, with guidance from Titan Gallagher Consulting, developed step scales that would be easy to understand, transparent, and predictable, as they are based on years of experience. We used market data from our Joint Board Adopted Market, which consists of 27 Virginia localities, and worked to ensure that we were using appropriate position matches (Attachment B).
STRATEGIC PLAN: Quality Government Operations: Ensure County government’s capacity to provide high quality service that achieves community priorities.
DISCUSSION: All of the pay scales are structured and administered in the same way, but each department has its own step scale that reflect its positions and the market for those positions. The scales are based on the market data for the entry/recruit positions in each department (Police Officer, Firefighter/EMT, Sheriff Deputy, and Public Safety Communications Officer) and then follows existing promotional increase practice. While this step scale breaks commonality with other classified employees, all teachers in the School Division are on a step scale, so this is not new for our organization.
All scales have an appropriate number of steps consistent with the requirements for full VRS retirement: 25 years of service for Fire-Rescue, Police, and Sheriff that are law enforcement officers and 30 years of service for the positions in the Emergency Communication Center.
These departments consist of the most critical functions of Local Government. They are highly visible in our community, frequently interact with citizens, and all participate in keeping our community safe. These departments constantly interact with one another. The proposed Public Safety Pay Plan is one more way to enhance the cohesiveness of these departments and the communication between them. The positions included are different from other classified positions, as they consist of sworn and essential personnel. The standards of training and job expectations of these positions are much different from other classified positions in local government. These positions have a much higher degree of risk in regards to personal safety, civil liability, and exposure to traumatic situations and stress. These departments have highly defined career paths and nearly all promotions are internal, with external candidates considered only at the top two highest ranks.
Included in this proposal is an increase in pay for education programs to all four public safety departments. In 2012, a Police Department program for valuing education was approved by the Board to align with our organizational value of learning and to encourage additional education. For consistency among the four departments included in the new pay plan and to uphold this value, we recommend implementing this for each of these departments. The new pay plans will result in salary increases for approximately 250 employees in the four departments (detailed in Attachment D).
BUDGET IMPACT: The approved FY19 budgeted amount for reclassification is $920,000. This budget amount was based on implementation costs for the previous Public Safety reclassification performed about five years ago. If the request to implement a new pay plan for the four identified departments is approved including the additional classified position reclassifications, the projected annualized cost for the first year is $1,733,000. This projected cost of implementation includes benefits, FICA, overtime, shift differentials, and education pay.
RECOMMENDATION:
Recommendation
Staff recommends approval of the proposed Public Safety Pay Plan with an implementation date of January 1, 2019 in order to be within the budget of $920,000 for FY19. Using current data, the projected cost for an implementation date of January 1st would be $867,000.
ATTACHMENTS:
Attachment A-Public Safety Pay Plan and Guidelines
Attachment B-Public Safety Market Data
Attachment C-Public Safety Annual Report Statistics
Attachment D-Public Safety Impact Charts