The Riverton City Council emerged from an hours-long, closed-door meeting Tuesday evening with consensus on a plan to provide more pay to local law enforcement officers.
The council didn’t take any action on the plan this week, but city administrator Kyle Butterfield said it would involve a “financial incentive in the form of a bonus.”
The city will also work on changing the way police department employees are “classified,” Butterfield said – a process that will require “new job descriptions” and the establishment of other “parameters” that will let “our employees know very clearly how to advance through the pay scale that we’re going to propose.”
“We’re not trying to be vague, but there are still things that need to be finalized,” Mayor Tim Hancock said, urging the public to “keep posted” about the “changes that are going to be made.”
“This is not something where you’re going to be dragged off and told, ‘Hey we’ll take care of it someday.’ … We actually do have a plan of action with some specifics. (We’re) doing what we can to make sure that our officers are going to have more of, I think, the recognition they deserve.”
Hancock thanked Butterfield and Riverton Police Department chief Eric Hurtado for putting “a lot of work into a lot of different ideas that we have looked at and considered” to address officer pay.
Those kinds of decisions are, “for the most part,” left to the city administrator to make, Hancock explained, but “he has to do it with the concurrence of the council.”
“So a lot of what we’ve been discussing is, what are we going to do, (and) what does the council agree with doing,” Hancock said. “(Now) they have a plan of action. They have some really good ways that we can go forward. They have our support.”
For more information call the City of Riverton at 856-2227.