The Greensboro City Council is holding a work session on “Compensation Matters” on Thursday, June 9.
City councilmembers have repeatedly said that their priority in the 2022-2023 budget is to ensure that city employees are adequately compensated.
The Greensboro Police Department is of particular concern. The authorized force of sworn officers is 679 and currently the GPD has over 100 vacancies. Based on the recent number of graduates of the Police Academy and the number of cadets in the current class, that number is due to rise.
According to the presentation at the work session, City Manager Tai Jaiyeoba is recommending that the starting salary for police officers be increased 7.4 percent from $41,513 to $44,583. The current officers will also have salary adjustments to prevent compression. According to the presentation, “Compression exists when the compensation of current employees fails to keep up with the compensation needed to attract less experienced employees.
“Compression also exists when there is too small a difference in compensation between leaders and their direct reports.”
The work session presentation also calls for increasing salaries for firefighters by 9 percent from $39,609 to $43,214 with corresponding increases in the Fire Department to prevent compression.
According to the presentation, the increases in Police and Fire department salaries would be paid for by increasing the proposed 66.25 cent tax rate by 1 cent. The proposed 66.25 cent tax rate would result in a 30 percent property tax increase, the highest tax increase in the history of Greensboro. It also maintains Greensboro as having the highest tax rate of any peer city in North Carolina.
The “Compensation Matters” presentation includes a 4 percent average salary increase for Guilford Metro 9-1-1 employees, plus a $3,600 annual night shift incentive.
Although city councilmembers regularly state that Greensboro city employees are underpaid, it doesn’t appear that the data from the presentation supports those statements. According to the presentation:
- “89 of 124 benchmark jobs are at or above market
- “24 of 124 benchmark jobs are less than 10% below market (3 of 24 are in Police)
- “10 of 124 benchmark jobs are more than 10% below market (7 of 10 are in Fire)”
Good luck hiring after an experienced 15 year K-9 officer does what he is trained to do, deal with criminals (who was released on an unsecured bond 4 days earlier) and gets charged and loses his job in 1 day. Monday morning quarterbacks. Lets put City Council in front of a simulator dealing with drunk, drugged, mentally challenged folks with or without weapons and see if they could handle the situation.
Mike Davis, I was thinking the same. Is this a joke or are they trying to soften the “moral distress” that our GPD officers are suffering due to this Unfair Situation?
Salary “compression”. Only in government folks.
“Salary compression” has been used by this council so much in the last few years it’s almost expected to be the buzz word of choice. It’s a way to blame the issue on something that removes the decisions of the council and the department directors.
Compression happens when you increase hiring salaries without adjusting the salaries of existing employees to maintain that differential. True, someone can be hired up in the range if they have unique or special qualifications over existing staff, but the culprit is usually the hiring decisions and the council not wanting to increase the wages of all employees in a given job classication.
I support increasing City employee compensation, but the 1 cent property tax increase, to provide that, is just stupid! City can REDUCE the tax rate and still provide plenty of money for employees and other NECESSARY expenditure if they simply eliminate all those give-away programs.
I worked hard for my money and really resent having to pay a ridiculous amount of property tax to provide for folks who could also WORK for their money. There are many many jobs available right now!
Also, I believe there’s a good amount of federal handouts already received by the City that could be used.
Nah. Too little, too late. And yet ANOTHER tax increase. No matter how much they take, it is never enough.
Throw the bums out.
Hhhmmm. Right at election season. I’m glad to have the endorsement of the 600 member Greensboro Police Officers Association. Tony Wilkins for Greensboro City Council District 5.
You’ve got my vote. Too bad we can’t change the configuration of the council who have a virtual monopoly on getting reelected. Yvonne was an early supporter of getting retirement benefits, health care plans, voting to support her family connections with “grants”, etc. It was so bad the state created a law to prevent that in the future, but we all know some of the politicians will find other ways around the laws in order to keep the gravy chain working. See how this works?
Oh looks I think an election is coming. Our council are all as dumb as a sack of hammers. They really think most of us intellectual voters don’t see thru their smoke screen. Total bunch of losers
Here is the kicker. Whenever they approve “raises” they never take affect immediately. Usually it is in December or January. It is false advertising. If they meant any of this to be anything other than political theater and trying to court police/fire and their families as voters, the raises would become effective July 1 when the new budget year hits. I guarantee you they will not. They will kick the can down the road. The bottom line is at the rate they are hiring for new academies (current police academy is in the low teens in enrollment) they will never keep up with regular attrition and people who leave. Once again defacto defunding. And do not forget their will probably need to be a new substation at the Hebrew Academy.
You scared of a bunch of children at the Hebrew Academy? What a hateful statement for you to make.
Yes, council. Let’s keep approving piecemeal raises and 20 take home cars at a time. That way, in 5 or 6 years, you will be almost caught up with where every other police department around here is TODAY. Guess what? 5 years from now, those other cities will have already moved up on pace with, and remaining ahead of, what we are doing.
“Yeah, let’s add 8 empty positions to the PD to show we care. Sure, they’ll never get filled until the other 120 get filled. That’s never going to happen, but at least we can say we ‘tried’.”
Greensboro City Council, you are either so incompetent that you don’t have any idea what falling behind means and the implications it carries, or you are in on actively un-staffing our police department.
Either way, you all suck.
The City Council didn’t have any problem giving themselves raises. They doubled their salary and elected themselves another term in office. Wish there were more GOOD persons running for office this year, we really need them.
Look at the raise that was given to Chuck Watts. What has he done to deserve a raise other than doing the mayor’s bidding?
That’s great that they think a raise will help their police department. Maybe the new cops will look past Avery Crump pushing to get Officer Hamilton charged and the department then immediately firing him for a good shooting. Certainly a few extra dollars a paycheck make up for that, right??