VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. — While Virginia Beach city leaders review a new proposed budget, one top priority falls to public safety funding and an identified pay disparity between employees in the Virginia Beach Sheriff's Office and the Virginia Beach Police Department.
In a letter to Mayor Bobby Dyer and the Virginia Beach City Council, City Manager Dave Hansen wrote that the city is awaiting additional review before addressing the pay disparity and making gradual adjustments over the next four years.
In April of 2018, City Council voted 10-1 in favor of eliminating any pay disparity between the two organizations. The city commissioned a study of pay disparities following that vote.
According to the Virginia Beach city website, entry-level sheriff's deputies make a starting salary of $41,683 - about 90% of what entry-level police officers make, a starting salary of $44,886. The comparison between organizations and pay scales only complicates with the variance of positions and job titles.
Vice Mayor Jim Wood said city council wants deputies and officers to operate on an equal pay scale.
“I think it’s important that all of our public safety employees are compensated fairly," Wood said. "Being a deputy in the jail is certainly different than being a police officer on the street but it’s not less stressful of a job or less important of a job.”
Wood said the disparity starts at the state level, where funding for sheriff's office deputies falls well below what cities pay for police officers.
“The state sets the wages for the Sheriff’s Office and it's abysmally low," he said. "You can’t hire people to do it for what the state wants to pay."
Wood said Virginia Beach has supplemented sheriff's office salaries for years, getting those employees' salaries to within 90 percent of their police counterparts. However, he said he wants to close that final 10 percent gap and knows that high-quality deputies deserve high-quality pay.
“We expect considerably more than the average [public safety officer] and we should compensate for that because we want to get the absolute best employees there are," Wood said.
In his 2018 annual report, Virginia Beach Sheriff Ken Stolle praised the city for studying and committing to fix the parity gap, writing it will help recruitment and retention of the best possible deputies.
“You don’t go into public safety to get rich, but we need to make sure [these employees] have a decent, comfortable [lifestyle] and frankly that’s something we need to do to make us competitive," Wood said.
Funding to close any pay disparity will likely be determined in an upcoming round of budget talks, as Virginia Beach addresses potential tax increases, additional stormwater funding, city employee raises, and many other proposals.