The Brown County Council completed the first of two steps in the discussion on bridging a pay gap in the sheriff’s department as a way to keep officers and attract others to come work here.

At the March 15 meeting, the council received more data about officer pay in Brown County compared to surrounding agencies.

Council President Dave Redding suggested the discussion on the Brown County Sheriff’s Department pay scale and benefits be done in two parts. The first phase was to collect and agree on the data that Det. Brian Shrader had gathered. The second phase will follow as the council comes together to look at options.

“We come together as a group that is aligned. We agree on things or we agree to disagree on certain things before we start developing options, proposals or solutions,” he said.

The discussion on officer pay began in January when Shrader attended a council meeting to explain the cost to taxpayers when a deputy leaves to make more and receive better benefits at another agency and how not having a competitive pay scale means the department receives less applicants for open positions.

In March, Shrader said he decided to approach the county council about the pay gap when he heard a couple deputies in the department were thinking of applying to other agencies. Shrader has been working as a police officer in Brown County for 11 years.

“I am from the standpoint that I want to keep as many good officers as we can keep right now, so when I began thinking about how we can keep these guys this is what I came up with,” he said.

“There’s a gap across all scenarios of our pay, but definitely in the beginning.”

The department loses on average one to two deputies a year. In January, Shrader shared that the cost of losing a deputy — for whom the county pays to train and certify — is around $60,000. The loss is even greater if that deputy has multiple training certifications or is a K9 handler — more than $77,000 with recent departures.

At the March meeting, data was presented showing the cost of a deputy leaving for a higher paying job was closer to around $83,000. That total includes the cost of losing a trained deputy and the money lost as a new one is trained to replace them, Redding explained.

“We also have to put a quantity on is a new hire as efficient of a merit officer of seven years who left to go to Greenwood or Monroe County or something like that? Are they as efficient and effective as that officer that left for more pay?” Redding said.

“A new hire at the end of two years is about at the 75-percent efficiency level of that merit officer that left. We assigned a dollar amount ($22,735) to that efficiency loss.”

Shrader said the data uses low numbers and erred on the side of caution.

“When I was talking to other agencies about what their attrition rates are and the costs incurred, they are well in the excess of $200,000,” he said.

“I’m still waiting to see what exactly they are using to get that cost. … It could be low or accurate, I don’t know, but I think for the most part it is pretty close.”

Redding said it was important the council agreed on the data, including the $83,000 loss, before proceeding on with the pay scale discussion.

“We don’t want to be fumbling around over the data when we get into the really difficult part of this process and what I expect to be some pretty hard choices if we choose to do something about this,” he said.

The sheriff’s department has 15 deputies, including the sheriff and chief deputy. One deputy, who is primarily a school resource officer, is paid for by Brown County Schools. The town of Nashville also has a separate police force.

The Brown County Sheriff’s Department does not currently have any openings for deputies, but Shrader said that could change in the next two years with retirements.

“That is assuming we’re able to retain everyone we have right now,” Shrader said.

“When I talked to those officers who were considering leaving at the end of last year, I told them to stay and let’s see if we can fix this problem. I can’t make any promises. I am hoping they stay.”

Pay gap

Shrader gathered the starting salary for deputies in surrounding agencies in Johnson, Jackson, Bartholomew, Monroe and Morgan counties along with the Indiana State Police and Indiana Conservation Officers.

Brown County is $8,000 below the average of those starting salaries.

The starting salary for a deputy here is $45,470 and is $50,996 in Morgan County, for example.

Some surrounding agencies also increase pay due to cost of living or provide longevity pay. For example, Shrader said that deputies in Morgan County will receive $1,000 in longevity pay for 20 years.

“Every year that goes on they just grow away from us, farther and farther and farther away,” he said.

Sheriff’s deputies here received the 1-percent raise the council approved for all county employees this year. They also receive incentive pay if they do extracurricular trainings.

A majority of the sheriff’s deputies and jailers are paid out of the county’s local income tax public safety fund.

Starting salaries are higher in city police departments. For example, the starting salary for the Greenwood City Police Department is $60,656, according to the data Shrader collected.

If a trained deputy moves to another department they will also receive more starting out as a lateral transfer. The base salary for a deputy in the Columbus Police Department is $60,633, but that number could increase to around $64,000 for a trained deputy who makes the move.

Not offering a competitive starting salary affects the number of people who want to apply to work in Brown County when there is an opening.

Since 2015, the sheriff’s department has experienced a “dramatic decrease” in the number of applicants. In 2015, 14 people applied for two positions. In 2019, three people applied for one position, Shrader reported in January.

“Once those applicants get access and see the pay scales of what we start our deputies out at, in some cases we never hear from them again even if we were interested in further interviews,” Redding said last week in the council meeting.

“When you start measuring our pay grade against these other places immediately our application pool goes down,” Shrader added.

If the department gets a handful of applicants, Shrader said the pool decreases further after the department does an in-depth background check.

“We might, of those four to six, end up with maybe one, maybe two, if we’re lucky, that are good and passed all of our qualifications,” he said.

Brown County is not the only agency looking at ways to retain officers in their department. At the March meeting, Shrader said that overall the law enforcement field is seeing less applicants for openings in various agencies.

On March 12, Bloomington Mayor John Hamilton introduced a pilot housing support program for officers in the Bloomington Police Department by providing a one-time down payment assistance of $12,000 to help purchase a home or $500 a month in rental assistance for up to five years. The city is also starting a pilot program to provide officers who live in the city with take-home cars, according to a press release from the city of Bloomington.

Shrader said that some deputies do live outside of the county because they cannot find affordable housing.

“They are younger and they had to go where they afford housing,” he said.

“We’ve had new hires that moved here. One of our new hires moved here and was renting and was trying to find a place to buy and never could find a place to buy. He had to buy somewhere on the county line.”

Looking on the Indiana Law Enforcement Academy’s website the day of the meeting, Shrader said there were 27 agencies, mostly in central Indiana, that were hiring. Of those 27 agencies, only two were offering less starting pay than Brown County.

“There’s 25 agencies that are all making more than us and they range from marshal departments to bigger city departments, like Fort Wayne and Terre Haute,” Shrader said.

“To me that is telling that we’re low, not just in our area, we’re low for the state.”

At the end of the discussion, Redding said the council will work on setting up a public forum to discuss the pay gap issue further. A date for that forum has not yet been set.