The Atlanta City Council meets Monday to work out the city budget. One key sticking point? How much to pay city employees — especially, police officers.
The Atlanta police union has been complaining for years about low pay. (Also here.) Ken Allen is with the International Brotherhood of Police Officers and a 30-year veteran of the Atlanta Police Department. He said this year feels different.
“Because of our vacancies and because of the lack of ability to recruit and retain right now, I think City Council realizes that we are getting to a drastic measure,” he said.
The union has proposed raising the $40,000 starting salary to $52,000, raising the maximum pay threshold from $55,000 to $64,500 and making officers eligible to top out in pay after nine years, rather than the current 15 years.
Council member Howard Shook, chair of the finance/executive committee, said council members have asked the mayor’s office to find money for a pay increase.
“There’s a general consensus that that has to be addressed in this budget more forcefully than the initial draft suggested,” he said. “I think everyone at this point is working to do something of a more structural nature. In other words: a pay increase.”
“I think the first priority right now is making sure that we do something in this budget that stems the tide of us losing officers and can keep the ones that we have on the streets,” City Council President Felicia Moore said.
The mayor’s first budget proposed one-time, $1,000 bonuses for police officers. Of those bonuses, Allen said: “That was going to do nothing for us.”
He said after that announcement, other officers reached out to tell the union they were applying for other jobs. He said they felt “that was not enough, and they didn’t feel valued in the city so they were looking for employment elsewhere.”
Atlanta’s human resources commissioner said in May that the police department is 17 percent vacant.
