Michael Williams – Memphis Flyer

Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland’s proposal to give 3 percent pay increases to all commissioned Memphis Police Department (MPD) officers and Memphis Fire Department (MFD) personnel continues to receive pushback from unions representing the two agencies.

After the mayor announced the move last week, he was hit with criticism from both the fire and police unions, who said there was not enough discussion of the increases.

Strickland touted the proposal is his weekly newsletter on Friday.

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“It’s the right thing to do for the men and women who quite literally put their lives on the line every day,” Strickland said in his email. “I’m incredibly proud of what we’ve partnered with the city council to accomplish, thanks to improving revenues, fiscal discipline, and some private donors.”

Dan Springer, the deputy director of media affairs in Strickland’s office, said the proposed 3 percent increases aren’t related to the private donations mentioned by the mayor. Instead, Springer said it refers to the $6.1 million grant previously given to the Memphis and Shelby County Crime Commission (MSCC) for retention and recruitment.

Details surrounding private donations to the MSCC were recently at the center of a lawsuit filed earlier this year by Wendi Thomas, founder of MLK50: Justice Through Journalism, and the Marshall Project, a New York-based nonprofit news organization.

Less than a week after the suit was filed, the names of the 2018 donors were available on the MSCC’s website, according to MLK50. Some of the largest donors last year, giving more than $100,000, include AutoZone, First Tennessee Foundation, and Memphis Tomorrow.

The cost of raises for 1,632 fire department employees and 2,089 police officers would be about $9 million. That’s nearly all of the additional $10 million Strickland said is added to the budget each year.

“The pay increases we propose will eat up the vast majority of that — which I think sends a strong message of just how big of a priority public safety pay is,” Strickland said last week.

MPA

Michael Williams, president of the Memphis Police Association

Michael Williams, president of the Memphis Police Association (MPA), questions the motive behind the proposed pay increase, saying that officers are “being used as political pawns.”

“We knew that we would not get a raise last year,” Williams told the Flyer. “But because this is an election year, we are being used as that golden nugget.”

Williams also said that 3 percent is not an adequate increase, but only a “gesture.”

“We have fallen too far behind and now we are playing catch-up,” Williams said. “It will not make a dent in what we really should be getting paid for the job that we do.”

Between 2010 and 2015, officers didn’t receive any raises. During that time from 2011 to 2013, officers instead had their pay cut by 4.6 percent.

Even after the 3 percent increase, Williams said MPD will remain one of the lowest-paid departments in Shelby County.

“We deserve to be brought up to equal pay of the highest-paid department in Shelby County for now,” Williams said. “That would be a great start and we feel is not asking too much.”

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Ursula Madden, chief communications officer for the city, responded to Williams’ claims saying that “it unfortunate that MPA views a 3 percent raise in this light.”

“If council approves this raise, this administration will have increased police officer pay between 8.75 percent and 10.75 percent since 2016,” Madden said. “Would the mayor like to do more? Absolutely. But, we have a finite amount of resources and this is the best we can do.”

After Strickland announced the increases last week, representatives of both the fire and police unions said the announcement was made without proper negotiations and that they hadn’t agreed to the 3 percent proposal.

MFA

Thomas Malone, president of Memphis Fire Fighters Association

Thomas Malone, president of the Memphis Fire Fighters Association (MFFA), said Strickland’s announcement of the pay increases came at the same time he and others from MFFA were meeting with city officials to discuss the increases: “No decisions had been made.”

Malone said he wasn’t bothered by the amount of the increase, but by the fact that there was no real negotiation period before the proposal was made public.

Malone met with city officials Wednesday morning to renegotiate the amount, proposing a 3.8 percent increase rather than the 3 percent set forth by the mayor.

Malone said the meeting was “uneventful” and that the group is at a standstill until the mayor presents his budget to the Memphis City Council next month.

“I think we made an offer that was very well thought out and data driven,” Malone said. “From our research it’s an amount that the city can afford. We are not trying to break the bank here.”

The mayor will present the 2020 fiscal year budget to the city council on April 16th. The council has until the end of May to discuss, alter, and pass the budget.

Many were surprised to learn last week that efforts are under way to “redesign” the Memphis Police Department (MPD).

Police Director Toney Armstrong delivered the news in a Memphis City Council budget hearing in his standard, flat, professional monotone that made the announcement seem expected, though many said it was the first they’d heard of the project.

The crux of the announcement was that the MPD’s proposed budget for next year includes about 188 fewer police officers than it had last year. The current budget allows Armstrong to have as many as 2,470 officers.

But it’s more than simply the number of officers influencing Armstrong’s decision to redesign the department. Armstrong had been directed by the city’s Chief Administrative Officer, George Little, to revise the department’s mission statement — that is, change what kind of services the MPD provides and how it delivers those services. The directive sprang from tight financial times for city leaders who are pressured to maintain services to taxpayers, which get more expensive every year, and pay at least $15 million more next year into the city’s ailing pension fund.

“We’re at a time of reckoning when we need to decide what level of service we can afford to provide,” Little said Tuesday.

Armstrong said the redesign process is moving ahead, but it is far from complete, and he prompted city council members for guidance.

“We are in the process of essentially designing a new police department,” Armstrong said. “As the police department stands now, we have [a complement of] 2,470 officers. If we scale back to 2,282 as we’ve proposed in this budget, there will be a level of services we will not be able to perform. We have to make decisions on what to do and what not to do.”

Fewer officers would likely come with a reduced mission. For example, the MPD could choose not to respond to burglar alarms or to fender benders. These ideas have been discussed in the past but were formalized in the city’s five-year strategic plan from consulting firm The PFM Group.

That study proposed a raft of changes that included a reduced list of services from the MPD, lowering pay for some police positions, hiring civilians to do office work that is currently performed by higher-wage sworn officers, cutting back on pay for college incentives and length of service, and cutting some holidays and sick days.

Perhaps the biggest move suggested by PFM is to consolidate the office and dispatch services of the MPD and the Memphis Fire Department (MFD). The study said as many as 130 governments have consolidated police and fire to some degree. Some have even cross-trained police officers and firefighters to do both jobs, it said.

But the study suggested the MPD and the MFD maintain independence but share back-office support and dispatchers. Doing so would save $7.6 million over five years with a reduction of 35 employees.

Michael Williams, president of the Memphis Police Association, said he read PFM’s report but didn’t know until Armstrong said it last week that the MPD was up for a redesign.

“The director’s got to do what the director’s got to do,” Williams said. “But what I heard him say to the council was, actually, the council has to decide what level of service do they want to provide to the citizens. If they want a full-service department, they have to increase the complement. If they do not, then the citizens have to be told and have to understand that they aren’t going to receive the same services they’re used to.”

• MPD calls 2012 – 1,637,200

• Radio dispatcher salary – $50,345 (34 percent higher than peer cities)

• MPD portion of city’s 2013 budget – 36.6 percent

• MPD/MFD holiday pay 2013 – $11.8 million

• MPD employees – increased by 314 from 2008-2013

Source: PFM Group