Kansas City needs to pay more to recruit new police officers. Here’s how to do it | Opinion

The Kansas City Police Department has 1,400 authorized patrol officer positions, and 269 are vacant. The department for years has been consistently unable to attract enough candidates to fill authorized positions.

A new officer employed today starts with an annual wage of $47,844. The average police officer retires at around age 54 to 55, with between 27 and 28 years of service.

An officer joining the force today would earn $2.7 million in wages, working 28 years before retiring. An officer who lives to 77 would receive $3.97 million in pension benefits.

My fellow former City Councilman Dick Davis and I have prepared a proposal that would shift money from the retirement side to the active side.

Under our plan, an officer would be expected to serve until age 65. The police department currently requires officers to retire at that age and start receiving their pension. We think the city is losing officers who have many more years of potential service through early retirement. Our plan would allow officers to retire earlier, but their pension benefit would be delayed until age 65.

The pension savings would be used to increase the department’s starting officer’s wage to $58,213 — $10,369 higher than the present entry level wage. Annual step increases would be reduced by 1%, including the pension.

We believe this starting wage would attract far more candidates, including many with outstanding credentials, and the shortage of officer candidates would disappear quickly.

During the first 28 years of an employment period, the department would spend far more each year under this plan. We propose using pension obligation bonds to pay this difference. Over that time, the city would need an additional $155,000 per officer to cover the increased costs. We used a 6% interest rate for the borrowed funds. We also assumed that 3% of the bonds would be retired each year.

At the end of 28 years, the debt remaining would be approximately $14,500. If the department switched to pension obligation bonds to cover this gap, its costs would neither increase nor decrease. Filling the 269 vacant positions would obviously increase costs. But funds to fill those positions are already budgeted.

In the 29th through 36th years, all the outstanding bonds would be retired. Beginning in year 27 and for the next 11 years, the department would no longer be paying a pension nor the cost of a replacement officer. Thus, the department would have savings of $47,884 in year 29, increasing to $88,581 in year 38. For the 11 years, the savings would be $751,570.

Over the last three years, the number of officers retiring has been estimated at 75 to 104. At 75 per year, the total savings in year 27 would be approximately $3.6 million.

We would expect some opposition to this plan because new hires would earn more than current officers. To offset this, our proposal would offer every existing officer the option to convert to the new officer scale. By accepting, the officer would receive a substantial raise but accept the new hire terms — additional years of service and retirement at 65.

The financial impact would be very similar to that for the exiting officer, although the savings would be smaller because he or she would have fewer years to serve.

We would expect many of the younger officers would accept that opportunity. An officer with five years of experience would receive an increase of $12,781, $14,804 for 10 years and $8,058 for 20.

Conversely, we would expect older officers to decline the offer. Our proposal would include a one-time bonus of $10,000 for those who declined. This could also be paid for with bonds. The intent is to ensure that every officer receives an incentive to support this package. Every officer could receive a big wage increase or a substantial bonus — his or her decision.

We are not actuaries, and our figures could and should be questioned. Our proposal is only a place to start. But most of the numbers we used could be increased or decreased without significantly changing the projected savings. It’s an idea worth considering.