The Stafford County Board of Supervisors will hold a work session on Wednesday, October 12, to discuss increasing the starting salary for the county’s public safety employees.
The move comes after the Virginia State Police increased its starting pay for troopers working in Northern Virginia to nearly $66,000, about 28% higher.
The move gave starting troopers a higher salary than other local police departments, including top-payer Arlington County, which offers new officers an annual $60,352 starting salary.
In Stafford, starting Sheriff’s deputies and fire and rescue personnel make an annual salary of $51,301. The county is short 24 sheriff’s deputies and two fire and rescue personnel.
The Stafford Board of Supervisors has requested staff provide information on the Public Safety Pay Scale compared to the market.
Stafford conducted a review of payscales of other police agencies in the region and found its payscale to be behind the market by about 9% for the Sheriff’s office and 5% for its fire and rescue department.
Under consideration are two options — a 20% pay raise that would cost taxpayers an additional eight-and-a-half million dollars and a 5% raise that would cost about $2 million. Both options require raising the Real Estate tax rate by more than four cents and just over a penny, respectively.
With the 20% increase, officers with the rank of lieutenant or higher wouldn’t receive their total raise until January 2024. The delay, said county leaders, would save about $300,000.
A third option would be to award retention bonuses for those who remain in the county while maintaining the current pay scale. The county could use $13.5 million in leftover federal coronavirus funds to pay for the bonuses.
The county would also consider giving a 5% mid-year pay raise in January 2023, during the middle of the fiscal year, and another 5% increase on July 1, 2023.
The work session will begin at 5 p.m. at the county government center, 1300 Courthouse Road in Stafford.
In 2020, the Board of Supervisors established a new pay scale for public safety employees, providing a predictable pay increase for sworn law enforcement officers in uniform, 911 call takers, and fire and rescue positions. During that time, the county aligned the starting pay rates for law enforcement and fire and rescue.
