DERBY – The administration at the Derby Police Department is asking the city’s tax board for a 4.36 percent increase in funding to police the city in the 2025-2026 fiscal year.
The current police department budget is $5,000,928. The proposed police budget is $5,229,091. The budget-to-budget spending increase totals $228,163.
In a memo to city hall, Derby Police Department Chief Scott Todd said the increase is being driven by a new contract with the police officers’ union. The chief’s paperwork shows the new contract accounting for roughly $166,000, or 72 percent, of the $228,163 increase.
The contract calls for officers to receive a 3 percent pay increase in 2025-2026.
However, the chief’s new budget also includes a retroactive 2.5 percent raise that covers fiscal year 2024-2025. The contract had not been approved when Derby passed its 2024-2025 budget.
The chief’s proposed budget also calls for a $57,544 increase to the overtime budget. The overtime budget is strained because of some extended vacancies in the department.
“Based on projections from this fiscal year, that number will likely be closer to $180,000,” according to the letter.
At a meeting of the Derby tax board Tuesday (March 11) Todd talked about how the department in recent years had a wave of retirements. The department tried to fill those spots with experienced officers who transferred from other police departments.
However, a few of those officers left Derby after a short time on the job. Now the department is relying on the traditional route of finding candidates and sending them to the police academy. But that is an 18-month process.
So, Derby, which is supposed to have 34 officers, has 32. That shortage drives up overtime costs.
The chief concludes his letter to city hall ends by saying the department would have liked to cut costs to lessen the impact on Derby’s overall budget.
“My team and I struggled to find cost-cutting measures within this request, but we simply cannot absorb the contractual pay raises without requesting this significant increase,” Todd wrote. “We were and we remain fully cognizant of the financial struggles in the city, and we look forward to working with you to attempt to find ways to minimize the impact of this request.”
The tax board – known formally as the Derby Board of Apportionment and Taxation – has until the last business day of April to adopt a budget.