A proposal from Peachtree City Police Chief James Murray would provide significant starting salary increases for police officers in an effort to lure more high-quality candidates to the department.

While several City Council members agreed a raise is needed, they balked at the estimated cost of implementing the raise for all patrol-level officers, which would cost in the neighborhood of $1 million. A more likely solution is one that phases in the increases over a span of several years, based on input from several council members at Thursday night’s budget workshop.

Under Murray’s proposal, the city would bump the starting salary for uncertified police officers — whom the city will send to police academy — from $30,942 to $38,000. Certified officers would rise from $32,508 to $39,900, a 5 percent increase, and a bilingual certified police officer would get an additional 5 percent increase, starting at $41,895.

In addition to the bilingual “bonus,” Murray also proposed the use of incentive pay of 5 percent to officers with associates degrees and 10 percent for those with a bachelor’s or master’s degree.

Currently the city offers just under $31,000 a year for uncertified officers and just over $32,500 for those who are certified, with a 5 percent salary increase for those with a college degree.

By comparison, the Atlanta Police Department is starting recruits at $34,000 and $38,500 and the DeKalb County Police Department offers $35,700 to uncertified officers and nearly $38,000 for those certified with two years experience.

While those are much larger police departments, both are also looking to hire a massive number of officers and they are swimming in the same recruitment pools as Peachtree City, Murray said. Also, Lawrenceville and Sandy Springs are hiring certified officers at $38,000 a year and up, according to a survey of actual salaries paid conducted by the police department.

Some metro police agencies give their chiefs some discretion for starting salaries, as in Smyrna, where the starting pay for a certified officer is $36,359 and can increase by 5 percent with an additional move to the mid-range of the pay grade if warranted by the chief of police there.

Murray said while the Peachtree City has a very good pension plan for officers, many young officers just starting out in police work don’t often look at benefits when they decide where to work. Instead, they look at the bottom line of how much they will be paid in salary, Murray said.

Murray presented a detailed study of a number of metro-area police departments showing what they pay new officers, including any additional pay for college degrees, whether the officer is uncertified or already certified and other various incentives such as bonuses, extra pay for speaking a different language and shift differential.

The department is having a hard time finding quality recruits, as evidenced by a recent law enforcement job fair in Gwinnett County where Peachtree City offered the lowest starting salary of all agencies in attendance, Murray said. Peachtree City only got one application back out of the 50 it gave out at the job fair, Murray added.

Murray said he does not want the city to lower its standards of hiring college graduates and people with clean criminal records just in an effort to fill positions.

Councilman Stuart Kourajian asked who has suggested the city needed to lower its standards and Murray said it was Mayor Harold Logsdon.

Logsdon responded that he was merely referring to one former city resident who was “a little bit rambunctious, but he served in Iraq and he’d like to come here and work.”

Earlier Murray had referenced how some police departments in metro Atlanta are in such a hiring crunch that they have lowered their standards for new police officers. Some have been willing to accept officers who have bad driving records, DUI convictions or other minor violations, Murray said.

Often those agencies don’t do much of a background investigation on their new recruits either, Murray added. Peachtree City, however, conducts an exhaustive background investigation, going to the recruit’s former workplace and talking to three people, and getting each of those three to give three more names of people who knew the recruit in the workplace.

Peachtree City also gives polygraph tests to recruits that are administered by the GBI, and Murray indicated that any small deception detected could cause a candidate to fall out of consideration.

At a previous meeting, Logsdon had said he hoped to wait to beef up the city’s public safety departments once the city’s newly annexed West Village subdivisions were well underway, providing more property tax revenue for the city. By Thursday night, he had changed his mind.

“I don’t think we can wait to fix this one,” Logsdon said.

Councilman Steve Boone suggested the increases be made on an incremental basis over several years, and several council members agreed.

“We can’t do one million this year,” said Councilwoman Judi-ann Rutherford.

Chief Murray said the department currently has 10 vacant positions, though six recruits will be headed to the academy in July. He also noted a recent study by the Georgia Municipal Association that showed Peachtree City was 39 percent underfunded compared to other police departments in cities of similar size.

“We run it very lean here,” Murray said.

The chief also noted that the Fayette County Sheriff’s Department now pays more for starting police officers than Peachtree City does.

The department conducts a fairly aggressive recruiting program, Murray noted, but still the applicant pool has dropped from 73 in 2003 to just 50 last year. In addition to various job postings at colleges and universities, police websites and militaryhire.com, the department also has a college internship program and runs programs engaging city residents.

Examples are the Boy Scout Explorer Post, the Citizen Police Academy, Community Emergency Response Team and also through introduction to public safety courses at McIntosh High School.

In other budget business, council made no firm decision on adding six new firefighters and up to four total police officers to the city’s payroll. The firefighter/paramedic positions would beef up the city’s personnel on each shift from 15 to 17, coming closer to the 19 personnel needed to send two on each apparatus, which is seen as necessary to meet a standard of getting four firemen on the scene of a fire within the first five minutes.

The initial budget proposal from last week included just one police officer, to enhance cart path patrol, and no firefighters. But city staff cut enough from the budget to negate the initially proposed quarter-mill increase.

Council also made no final decision on whether or not to hire several other full-time positions recommended by City Manager Bernie McMullen: a assistant city planner, a city buildings systems supervisor and an accountant.

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