Councilman expresses doubt that pay is only reason city police officers are leaving

With Louisville media watching, Mayor John Royalty offers input on the city police department salaries in the wake of questions of why the police department is losing officers.

By JIM BROOKS
Nelson County Gazette / WBRT Radio

Councilman Bill Sheckles expressed doubt that salaries were the only reason why officers are leaving the police department.

Thursday, March 9, 2017, 11 p.m. (March 13, 2017, 3 p.m. — Corrected NCSO salary figures with updated info) — Bardstown Police Chief Steve Uram said Thursday the department’s low pay is making it difficult to recruit officers to replace those who have left in recent weeks.

Speaking to the Bardstown City Council’s finance committee Thursday evening, Uram said four officers have left the city police department since June 2016; three of them took jobs with police agencies with higher pay. Uram anticipates two additional officers will leave in May for better paying jobs with the Kentucky State Police.

When Uram took over as chief, he said learned that six officers were looking for work elsewhere, which amounts to nearly one-fourth of the police department personnel. To make the city police department’s pay more competitive, Uram said he would like to see the council approve raising officer pay by 12-1/2 percent.

The Bardstown Police Department has the third lowest officer pay in a comparison of nine area police agencies. Untrained recruits receive $15.67 per hour during their training; after graduation from the police academy and field training, officer pay increases to $16.67 per hour.

By comparison, the post-academy/field training pay at other agencies:

Police Agency		Recruit Pay		Post Academy		Post Field Training
Jeffersontown		$20.95		$20.95		$20.95
Nelson County Sheriff's Office		$15.00		$21.78		$22.78
Shepherdsville PD		$18.04		$18.04		$19.86
Elizabethtown PD		$18.03		$19.71		$19.71
LMPD		$17.31		$18.47		$18.47
KSP		$16.83		$18.21		$18.21
Bardstown PD		$15.67		$16.67		$16.67
Springfield PD		$12.50		$12.50
Lebanon PD		$11.75		$11.74

The problem with hiring new police recruits is the length of time it takes to complete their course of training, Uram explained. Recruits must go to the police academy and then complete months of additional field training — all the while they are paid by the city police department.

Experienced officers can hit the streets in much less time, but Uram said there aren’t enough experienced officers interested in coming to work in Bardstown — and it boils down to low officer pay.

“I had an application come across my desk top today with the minimum salary requested was $21.50 an hour,” he said. “There’s no way I can pay that and stay with the confines of my budget.”

Police Chief Steve Uram presented the city council safety committee with a review of wages paid by other police agencies showing the Bardstown Police Department as being the third lowest of those surveyed.

SHECKLES: MORE THAN JUST PAY? But Councilman Bill Sheckles questioned if officer pay was the real reason why officers were leaving the Bardstown Police Department. He cited his experience with the police department during his term as mayor which ended in December 2014.

“Two years ago we were fully staffed and had a waiting list of officers from other departments wanting to come to our police department,” Sheckles said of the state of the police department at the end of his term as mayor. “Pay was never an issue at that time. How is now after two years its all about the pay?

“You just don’t go from a fully staffed police department with qualified people waiting in the wings and in two years we’re losing officers left and right, and all of a sudden its about the pay,” he said. “Before, it was never about the pay.”

Uram told Sheckles he couldn’t speak to the department’s past. “All I can tell you is what I have right now,” he said.

After the meeting, Sheckles told the Gazette the police department has been in a state of turmoil going back to the department’s reorganization early last year. Morale with in the department has suffered with what Sheckles described as “promotions and demotions” in the past year, and pointed to a series of leadership issues in the department “going all the way up to the mayor.”

But faced with the task of recruiting officers, Uram told the committee that the department’s low pay is a real obstacle in hiring training officers.

Uram said three experienced officers will be joining the police department in the next month, all three coming from departments with lower pay and benefits. The officers bring with them specialty training, he said. One has training in Drug Abuse Resistance Education; another officer’s specialty is in ABC alcohol beverage law enforcement; the third has training as a firearms instructor and rangemaster.

Bardstown Fire Chief Randy Walker provided the committee an overview of its short-term and long-term goals.

To reduce turnover, Uram said the department will now require new officers to sign an employment contract; experienced officers will be required to stay a minimum of two years; new recruits will be asked to stay three years. Officers who leave before they complete their contractual obligation will be asked to repay a portion of their training costs, based on their length of service.

The department’s two latest police recruits will enter the police academy in June but won’t be on the street until January or February next year. A third recruit won’t be on the street until next March or April, he said.

Uram said his preference is to keep the department fully staffed at 27 authorized officers due to the city’s continued growth and the growing number of calls for service.

BARDSTOWN FIRE. Bardstown Fire Chief Randy Walker reviewed the fire department’s long-term goals which included improving the city’s overall ISO fire protection rating.

Training is an area where the department stands to make significant gains in regard to ISO rating.

The department’s training facility is south of Bardstown at the end of Sutherland Road near the city sewer plant. That distance means an on-duty fire crew doing training would be four miles further away from the location of a fire if one happened during training at the existing facility, delaying the department’s response time.

Walker said the department is seeking grant money to purchase a portable training tower. The portable unit could also be used for training by other fire departments in the county, he said.

Walker added that in regard to firefighter training, ISO looks for national certifications for firefighters.

“Our fire training had never been nationally certified, so we set one of our training goals this year to have all our firefighters nationally certified,” he said.

He plans to reach that milestone by November of this year.

He also said the department is working on pre-planning and inspections, which help firefighters get familiar with buildings and pre-plan some of their possible fire operations. This worked to the department’s advantage at a recent fire at HEC Manufacturing. The crew that responded had visited the facility previously and had a Knox Box in place — a box that securely held keys firefighters could quickly access. The keys gave the responding firefighters quick access to the fire without creating damage by forcing entry into parts of the building.

FIREFIGHTER PAY. Walker said the firefighter base pay is in the right range, and other fire departments also offer financial incentives for firefighters who receive specialized training above and beyond the required training

If the department adopts this incentive plan, Walker said it would add approximately $70,000 to the fire department budget. The incentive pay would help retain highly trained firefighters.

“As it gets closer to budget time, this is something I would like to revisit,” he said.

NEXT UP: The city council safety committee’s next scheduled meeting is 5 p.m. June 8, 2017 at the mayor’s conference room at Bardstown City Hall.

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