After nearly a year, the city of Arnold has come to terms with its police communications clerks, who previously were classified as dispatchers, for a new collective bargaining agreement.
City Council members voted 7-0 on July 18 to enter a two-year agreement with the members of the Eastern Missouri Coalition of Police Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 15. Ward 3 Councilman Rodney Mullins was absent from the meeting.
The contract is retroactive to Sept. 1, 2023.
Arnold officials and representatives from Lodge 15 have been working to negotiate a new collective bargaining agreement since August 2023 after council members voted unanimously to extend the city’s previous CBA with Arnold Police dispatchers for 90 days.
City Administrator Bryan Richison said coming to an agreement about the salaries for the five communications clerks was the biggest hurdle to overcome.
In February 2016, Arnold began using Jefferson County 911 Dispatch for its dispatching services, Arnold Police Chief Brian Carroll said.
Richison said that switch changed the duties for the city’s communications clerks.
“In the previous contract, there was no pay adjustments to reflect that their job had dramatically changed,” he said. “The city’s feeling was looking at some data, they would have been very well paid as dispatchers, but they are not dispatching anymore.
“And they were extremely well paid as communications clerks. We felt that they were already more than adequately compensated.”
A phone message left Monday with a lawyer who represents Lodge 15 was not immediately returned.
City documents show a first-year communications clerk was being paid an annual salary of $49,892.80, and a dispatcher at the top of the city’s step-pay scale may be paid up to $58,656 a year.
Richison said the clerks do not receive a raise for this current fiscal year, which started on Sept. 1, 2023, and runs through Aug. 31.
He said the clerks would receive a pay raise for the 2024-2025 fiscal year, which begins Sept. 1 and runs through Aug. 31, 2025, if other employees get raises because the clerks’ pay increases would be the same that all city employees receive next fiscal year.
Richison said the city is currently working on the 2024-2025 budget, and he does not know what kind of raises employees could potentially receive.
“I’m glad we were able to get the contract done,” he said. “I understand they (the clerks) are disappointed with not receiving a pay increase for this first year. But our belief was the duties of the job had dramatically changed and there had not been any reflection of that in what they were paid.”
Carroll said clerk positions are staffed 24 hours a day seven days a week, and their duties include entering data into various criminal justice systems; entering information about stolen articles and missing persons; confirming local warrants; assisting the detective bureau and patrol division with gathering criminal history and investigative information; answering non-emergency calls; monitoring surveillance cameras with special attention given to the booking and jail cells; and activating the outdoor warning system during certain emergency operations.
“Our communications clerks have a very important job at the Police Department,” he said.
Richison said he doesn’t know if anyone was happy with the deal that was reached with the clerks, and he couldn’t predict what negotiations will be like when the current deal ends.
“We have focused more and more on data from the St. Louis area and where we fall when it comes to pay,” Richison said. “I think we will continue that. When we negotiate in a year, we will look at where all employees represented by a union fall. We have taken a data-driven focus on the pay information, and we try to make sure where we want to be, which is not at the top but not at the bottom.”
Richison said the city only extended the previous agreement one time.
“When it ran out, basically, where there is an impasse, we are allowed to kind of do what we want,” he said. “It wasn’t a great situation because we wanted to reach a deal. Basically, everything was frozen, and nothing changed until the (new) contract was approved.”
The two-year contract with the clerks is the same length of the agreement between the city and the police officers’ union that was approved in August 2023.
In the deal with the police officers’ union, salaries for officers, corporals, sergeants and lieutenants increased by 20 percent this fiscal year. That groups’ salaries will increase by 10 percent for the 2024-2025 fiscal year, according to the agreement.
“We wanted to keep them all on the same timeline,” Richison said.
The city was able to increase officers’ salaries because residents voted to approve a 1-cent sales tax increase to fund the Police Department in April 2023, Richison said.
He said Arnold also uses funds collected from the 1-cent sales tax for its Police Department to pay for the clerks’ salaries.
The sales tax to help fund the Police Department increased the city’s overall sales tax from 1.25 cents per $1 to 2.25 cents per dollar. The measure also lowered residents’ property tax from 0.363 cents per $100 assessed valuation to 0.1815 cents per $100 assessed valuation.
The total sales tax people pay in the city ranges from 9.35 cents per $1 to 11.35 cents per $1 depending on where they shop because some stores are in special taxing districts.
In addition to the 2.25-cent sales tax that goes to the city, the overall sales tax charged in the city includes 4.225 cents for the state, 1.625 cents for the county, 1/2 cent for the Rock Community Fire Protection District, 1/2 cent for Jefferson County 911 Dispatch and 1/4 cent for the Rock Township Ambulance District.