WB police and fire administrators receive raise

WEST BLOOMFIELD — At its May 11 meeting, the West Bloomfield Board of Trustees voted to increase the salaries of the township’s police and fire chiefs and deputy chiefs. 

The vote was 4-0, with trustees Vincent Kirkwood, Michael Patton, Diane Rosenfeld-Swimmer and Jonanthan Warshay all voting “yes” for the salary increase. Trustees Debbie Binder, Jim Manna and Teri Weingarden were not present.

“This is long overdue,” said Patton, who was West Bloomfield’s police chief before retiring in early 2025. “Over time, the differences between what the police chief and fire chief had been making have been eroded with not only contractual increases that the unions received but also departmental increases.” 

As the chief, Patton increased officers’ pay to be competitive with other communities, but those raises did not extend to the administrators, which include the police chief and deputy chief.  

“We realized we had fallen behind. It is a very competitive labor market,” he said. “One of the things new applicants will look at is how much they will make. … As those increases occurred over time, the differences between what a patrol officer would make and what a police chief would make were very little. There are police officers that make more than the police chief because they work overtime, and they get other compensation.” 

Officers ranked lieutenant and below are unionized and receive overtime pay. Chiefs and deputy chiefs in the police and fire departments are not unionized and do not receive overtime pay, according to Marya Duncan, the township’s human resources director.

Police chiefs work more than anyone, said Patton, yet even if they work 1,000 extra hours, the amount of money they make stays the same. This wage discrepancy affects pensions and can reduce the incentive to become a chief or a deputy chief.

“Wages need to be commensurate with responsibilities,” he said. 

The jobs have become increasingly demanding, according to the human resource director.

“There was an inequity of pay between the ranks below them,” Duncan said.

The resolution proposed to the board was to resolve this wage discrepancy. 

According to the resolution, historically, police and fire administrative personnel have been compensated on a wage differential; however, due to mitigating circumstances, the wage differential has not been implemented for years. This resolution reinstated the wage differential. 

A wage differential is a salary increase of a percentage above the rank just below. Duncan gave an example where a patrol officer makes $50,000, the sergeant makes 10% more, and the lieutenant makes 15% beyond the sergeant. These differentials weren’t being applied to the chief and deputy chief positions.

The effective date of the resolution was at the start of this year, but it took payroll time to make the implementation and process the increases for the police and fire chiefs and deputy chiefs, she noted. As such, the resolution was again cited at the May 11 meeting and approved. The chiefs and their deputies from both departments will receive retroactive pay, and the increase in pay will be realized from this point forward. 

The chiefs for both the police and fire departments will receive $160,000 annually while the deputy chiefs will receive $140,000 annually. Before this increase, the police chief received $148,943 per year and the deputy chief received $129,232, while the fire chief and deputy earned $157,134 and $136,339, respectively, according to Duncan.

“Fire chiefs receive paramedic pay, and their paramedic pay was rolled into their regular pay, so they do have a little different pay structure (from the police),” Duncan said. 

Every year, police and fire employees receive a cost-of-living increase, but the increase to the administrators’ salary is new. The human resources director said this is the first year the township has done this.