Amarillo says they don't have money for police raises
Amarillo police officers are currently negotiating pay increases with the city. The problem, however, is that the city doesn’t have any spare money to hand out.
In order to find a happy medium, the Amarillo Police Officer’s Association is going to have to further curtail its wage proposal or else the city is going to have to convince a newly elected city council to find the money by either reducing city services or raising property taxes, Deputy City Manager Bob Cowell said.
The city and the police officer’s association met Monday for a third round of salary negotiations. They last met about two weeks ago when city staff basically sent police representatives back to the drawing board. At that time the association was asking for a myriad of upgrades regarding benefits, including a 16 percent increase to the base salary offered to new recruits.
The association returned Monday with a more modest pay structure that would cost the city about $1.3 million in total to implement, Cowell said.
Read more: http://amarillo.com/news/local-news/2017-05-08/amarillo-says-they-don-t-have-money-police-raises