Supervisors in the Concord Police Department have signed a contract with the city that will give them 2½ percent pay raises every year for the next three years.
Formed in 2008, the Concord Police Supervisors Association is the newest union in the city. It was also the first to agree to cost-sharing on health insurance, which is now included in all six of the city’s collective bargaining agreements.
The estimated cost increases associated with the contract for the next three calendar years are $80,600 for 2016, $86,400 for 2017, and $77,600 for 2018. Across the entire department, the city budgeted $6.9 million for compensation in fiscal year 2016.
The Concord City Council approved the new contract at its April meeting with little public discussion. Before the unanimous vote, Mayor Jim Bouley thanked the union, the city solicitor’s office and other city departments “for putting together what I consider to be a very fair agreement for the taxpayers in the city of Concord.”
Negotiations began in July, and the three-year agreement is retroactive to Jan. 1 of this year.
“This contract will ensure that the salary of our Concord police supervisors remains competitive with other communities, and it will also assist in attracting new officers to our police department,” City Manager Tom Aspell said in a press release.
The supervisors union has 19 positions who are among the city’s highest paid employees, including lieutenants, sergeants, and the heads of the dispatchers and parking offices. The group’s first contract was largely modeled after the agreement for the department’s patrol officers. The latest contract will be in effect until the end of 2018.
Lt. Michael Pearl, president of the union, declined to comment on the new contract. Both Aspell and police Chief Brad Osgood, who were on the city’s negotiating team, characterized the end result as fair and balanced.
“As a department head, that’s what I seek at the end of the day,” Osgood said. “Fair working conditions, fair pay and benefits.”
This contract included few changes. The new pay scale for a parking supervisor ranges from about $45,000 to $65,000; a dispatch supervisor from about $46,000 to $61,000. Depending on rank and tenure, police sergeants and lieutenants make between about $58,000 and $93,000.
Like the previous agreement, employees will contribute 10 percent of premium costs to their health plans.
“I think that cost sharing is a new concept within the city of Concord,” Osgood said. “It’s not a new concept throughout the health insurance industry. You have to educate people to understand why cost sharing is appropriate, so really it’s communication and messaging.”
Aspell said this contract is equally important for its members and for the patrol officers who could move up to be supervisors.
“You want to make sure the people from outside the organization or people within the organization see the value in moving up,” Aspell said.
Concord struggles to compete with police departments in other parts of the state or in neighboring Massachusetts, Aspell said. That concern will play into negotiations on the next Concord Police Patrolmen’s Association contract, he said.
Osgood said he had five openings for patrol officers and one for a supervisor. In addition, two future officers just graduated from the police academy and will begin field training, and two more are about to begin the academy.
Osgood said the department needs to fill those openings and grow the department in the future.
“The last couple of years with this drug epidemic, and the complexity of the calls and crime that we’re seeing, really leads me to believe that we need to increase our capacity in our detective division, shore up some vacancies in the patrol division, apply additional resources to undercover or drug enforcement,” Osgood said. “We need to make sure we have adequate personnel.”
A copy of the contract is available on the city’s website at concordnh.gov.
(Megan Doyle can be reached at 369-3321, mdoyle@cmonitor.com or on Twitter @megan_e_doyle.)