Asheville city government employees all started getting bigger paychecks July 11, as funded by the $256 million budget Asheville City Council unanimously approved in June. But one group of municipal workers, the officers of the Asheville Police Department, saw proportionally greater gains than their colleagues.
Most city employees received either a 3% pay increase or a flat raise of $1,740 (equivalent to about 4.5% for the lowest-paid workers). Nearly all APD officers, however, received “compression adjustments” that weren’t clearly quantified in public budget documents.
In response to a BPR inquiry, APD spokesperson Samantha Booth confirmed that those raises covered 139 sworn officers and averaged out to a pay increase of 6.5%. Another 4 officers, along with the department’s non-sworn professional staff, received the general city pay increase.
Since 2020, as APD experienced a wave of resignations its leaders attributed to a lack of city support in the wake of racial justice protests, Asheville’s increases to police pay have outpaced the overall growth of city spending. The department’s allocation for salaries and wages rose from about $16.1 million in fiscal year 2022 to more than $21 million in the current budget, an increase of over 30%. Over the same period, the total city budget grew by about 27%.
The goal of these increases, APD Chief Michael Lamb told policing publication Law Officer in 2024, has been “making it easier to attract, recruit, and retain officers.” While the employee headcount has been trending upward, the department continues to face substantial staffing difficulties despite higher compensation.
At the nadir of APD’s staffing situation in June 2021 — when its challenges were featured by the New York Times as among the worst in the nation — the department had 87 openings out of 238 sworn officer positions, a vacancy rate of over 36%. As of July 22, according to Booth, APD had 66 openings out of 232 officer positions, a roughly 28% vacancy rate.
Most of those vacancies are in APD’s patrol division, responsible for day-to-day public safety efforts. The division’s budgeted strength is 146 officers, but 41 of those positions are open. The criminal investigations division is missing 15 of 42 officers, while community engagement is down 13 officers from a budgeted headcount of 26.
Given those vacancies, APD’s salary budget includes over $5.4 million beyond the base pay of current employees. Booth said that figure also accounts for “additional pay components and allowances,” including $1.3 million in “specialty pay categories” like bonuses for advanced law enforcement certification. Other salary spending includes overtime, standby, and quality-of-service awards.
The city continues to focus on hiring new entry-level employees as the foundation of its personnel strategy. Minimum officer starting pay is now over $50,000, up from about $37,000 in 2021, and APD currently has 36 trainees in the pipeline to become sworn personnel.
“To fill roles in divisions such as criminal investigations or community engagement, we must first maintain adequate staffing of sworn officers, who can then be promoted or transferred into these specialized positions,” says Booth. “Staffing across all divisions is critical to ensuring the department operates effectively.”
Policing advocates, while generally supportive of the new APD pay scale, say further increases will likely be needed to make Asheville more attractive for both aspiring and current officers.
During a May hearing on the budget, Richard Tullis, vice president of the North Carolina Police Benevolent Association and an APD sergeant, said the city wasn’t competitive against others in the state. While Asheville ranks among North Carolina’s most expensive places to live, he said, it placed just 15th in terms of officer compensation.
“We simply can’t afford to do business as usual as it relates to the pay plan,” Tullis told City Council. “We cannot sustain an agency where we continually see well-trained and experienced officers walk out the door.”
Even with the recent bump, APD pay lags behind that of the state’s other large municipal police departments. The Raleigh Police Department’s starting salary, for example, is over $55,000. The Greensboro Police Department offers new recruits over $57,000, while the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department starts officers off at more than $58,000.
