The Alexandria City Council ended the collective bargaining impasse regarding three outstanding issues between the Alexandria Police Department’s union and the city late last night (Tuesday).
In a meeting at City Hall that lasted until 11:30 p.m., Council decided in favor of the Alexandria chapter of the Southern States Police Benevolent Association’s request for $10.2 million in increased salaries for APD officers, sergeants and lieutenants over the next three years, while backing the city’s positions on pay parity and an annual $1,200 longevity bonus for those sworn staffers.
More than 40 APD officers attended the meeting.
“If we could pick one thing, to get that pay scale, that’s the biggest win,” said William Thetford, the union’s chief negotiator, after council rendered its decisions. “I would have loved to get all three, or two out of three, but we came away with that one thing.”
City Council sided with the city government on granting a $1,200 annual longevity bonus to officers, versus the $2,500 bonus proposed by the union. Council also approved the city’s pay parity proposal, which caps the approved salary agreement and prevents the parties from reentering negotiations based on potential salary increases in neighboring jurisdictions.
Thetford said the department is hemorrhaging officers due to compensation issues, and that many officers are leaving to work for federal law enforcement agencies and neighboring jurisdictions that pay higher wages.
Police Chief Tarrick McGuire, who is on the city’s collective bargaining negotiating team, told Council that there are currently 291 sworn officers working in the department, and that a fully staffed APD has 322 officers. In a recent interview, McGuire told ALXnow that he has had to shift officers from specialized units to handle patrol operations on the street.
Increased wages
Council approved the union’s proposal to increase salaries by $10.2 million over the next three years for officers, sergeants and lieutenants across all pay scales. That figure is $2.2 million more than the $8 million the city was prepared to pay.
While the city and union’s proposal for the first year of the three-year agreement was identical — $75,000 a year for first-year officers (a 17.21% increase), $87,489.63 for first-year sergeants (a 21% increase) and $103,240.51 for first-year lieutenants (a 15% increase) — the difference between the parties was in the remaining two years of the agreement, for fiscal years 2028 and 2029.
In those latter two years, the union proposed 2% annual salary increases for all officers. The cost of SSPBA’s salary proposal over the life of the three-year contract is:
- FY 2027: $ 2,595,918
- FY 2028: $ 3,391,477
- FY 2029: $ 4,251,850
The city’s proposal would have provided officers, sergeants and lieutenants a 0.5% annual salary increase.
The SSPBA recently asked for community support in a petition calling for increased salaries, as the department’s pay has fallen behind other Northern Virginia localities.
Potential tax increase
Morgan Routt, the city’s budget director, told council that the expense of both the city’s and union’s salary options alone would likely have to be paid for by a tax increase, a reduction of city services or laying off city staff.
If taxes were increased by 0.9 cents, Routt said that the average cost to an Alexandria homeowner would be $434 in increased annual taxes.
City Manager Jim Parajon said that, as of 2023, there were 26,000 Alexandria homeowners who are housing cost burdened, paying a majority of their income on housing expenses.
“Many of our residents, those 26,000 households, any tax increase, any increase in their cost structure, really means that they’re making a choice between buying groceries and medicine,” Parajon said. “It’s not just a police labor issue, it’s a much larger issue.”
The city and union reached consensus on the 47 other articles within the collective bargaining agreement proposal. Now that these three outstanding issues have been put to bed by the City Council, the parties will spend the next few weeks ratifying the package, which will then go back to Council for authorization, Thetford said.
Negotiations between the union and the city began in April. The city’s three-year collective bargaining agreement is set to expire at the end of June 2026, and the city and union are working for the new three-year agreement to go into effect on July 1.
