NOTE TO READERS: Scroll below to access the searchable Concord salary database. If you’re using a smartphone, hold your phone in landscape mode to get the best results.

As the number of city employees earning six figures continued to climb in 2023, more police officers joined in that group while the number of female employees in it fell.

Of the 115 employees whose overall take home was over $100,000, 18 were women — that’s down one from last year, even as the number of people earning six figures grew by 15. Proportionally, it’s a decline of about 3.5%.

Police officer Melissa Pfefferle was the highest-earning female employee in the city for the third consecutive year. She also was the only woman among the ten highest earners on the city payroll, making $157,444, almost half of which was overtime.

Concord’s highest-paid employee remains City Manager Tom Aspell, who earned $ 226,400 in pay last year. However, the city had a second employee who made more than $200,000, which was Police Lieutenant Craig Levesque, who was paid $201,834 and included more than $90,000 in overtime.

Throughout last year, city officials discussed increasing the diversity among employees to better reflect the community.

>kern -0.19pt<The city had 39 women and four people of color — all of whom were women — in its 149 leadership positions, meaning managerial or supervisory roles or higher, in 2023. Two of those women were senior city hall staff, including former City Planner Heather Shank and former City Prosecutor Tracy Connolly, who no longer work for the city. Connolly departed partway through last year and Shank near the end of this January.>kern 0pt<

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About three-quarters of the city’s $78 million general fund goes towards salaries and benefits. The city uses recruitment software aimed at increasing diversity in its hiring pool and is undertaking a class and compensation study of its competitiveness as an employer.

City officials have expressed their desire to ensure Concord can both attract candidates from all backgrounds and retain those already on staff.

Councilors reiterated their desire to improve the retention of city employees — especially public safety staff — at the council’s priority setting session last week.

In its two-year list of priorities, councilors asked that recruitment and retention be emphasized as targets for both general city organization and for public safety.

Six months ago, the council gave the police department an additional half million dollars to boost both wages and overtime. Described as a temporary retention program, it aimed to disrupt a turnover cycle by rewarding staff who were working overtime to make up for vacancies on the force. The department reported 11 open positions out of 90 at the time.

With the October funding boost, the city spent about $1.72 million on police overtime last year, up more than 26% from $1.36 million in 2022. The number of officers earning more than $100,000, most of whom hit that number through overtime pay, rose from 32 to 39 — well over a third of the department.

Councilors said last week they wanted an update on whether that investment was paying off — especially as they more vocally stressed constituent concerns about public safety in the city.

“If we’re going to be investing in efforts to retain people, I want to see how that’s going so we can understand whether the money we’re spending is well spent,” at-large Councilor Nathan Fennessey said. “And if we need to start reassessing the nature of the services we provide, and/or the manner in which we do it, I think we need to have that data.”

At the end of 2023, the department had 15 officer vacancies, four more than when it received the extra funding, and one officer was terminated in January.

The city posts its employee earnings by calendar year on its website, and searchable databases of them for the last three years can be found on concordmonitor.com.