Meridian police officers may get a boost in pay heading in to the new fiscal year after Mayor Jimmie Smith unveiled his administration’s proposed budget at a City Council meeting Tuesday.Included in the budget is a $5,000 raise for Meridian Police Department’s current certified police officers, as well as a $5,000 increase to the starting pay the department offers. According to the city’s website, starting pay for police officers is currently $36,400 per year. After the raise, newly hired officers would come in making $41,400 annually.

Smith said he is also working with some of Meridian’s foundations to offer up to $2,000 in retention incentives to encourage new officers to stay in the Queen City. The legality and logistics behind how those incentives would be distributed is still being worked out.

“We’ve got a good group of police officers already, but I think that if we start doing some of these kinds of things, that it will help grow our police department,” he said.

Rebuilding the police department was a priority for Smith’s administration when he took office in 2021, and the city has made great progress. Police pay was increased by $2.50 per hour in February of 2022, work has begun establishing a new camera system with a monitoring station at MPD, the department has added a drone to its arsenal of tools and new body cameras are in the works.

“I think that our rebuilding is coming along pretty good,” Smith said.

In addition to the increased resources, Smith said stable leadership at MPD has also helped the department quite a bit. Prior to him appointing Chief Deborah Naylor Young, the department had seen five chiefs in 12 months.

“We have had a lot of challenges dealing with our police department because we had so many police chiefs in one year, and that was devastating to the police department,” he said. “I think now that we’ve had consistent leadership, that helps us do better.”

Yet one area where MPD still struggles is staffing, Smith said. Law enforcement agencies nationwide are struggling to fill vacancies as fewer and fewer people look to enter the field. Meridian, which has 55 certified police officers, is no exception.

“It’s nationwide, and not just police,” he said. “Specifically police, but in every category, it’s hard to retain people.”

Going off numbers, MPD’s current force is highly effective, Smith said, with the number of homicide cases solved well above the national average. Unofficial data from news reports show 20 homicides were reported between Jan. 1, 2022 and Friday, with arrests reported in all but two cases. Nationwide, only about 50% of homicides are solved.

Unfortunately, Smith said, most residents don’t have the luxury of that bird’s eye view, and the regular reports of gunfire, exacerbated by social media, feed fear in the community.

By growing the police department, Smith said he hopes to not only reduce crime further but also increase police presence in the community. Residents want to see more officers on patrol in their communities, and to do that, Meridian Police Department needs to grow.

However, lasting solutions to the city’s issues with shootings, gangs, the homeless and more will require more than just more officers, Smith said. The police department needs residents to report crimes when they see them. Cooperation from the community has improved over the past two years, he said, but there is still more work to be done.

“I think that we’ve still got a long way to go, but I think that we’re getting there,” he said.

Meridian Police Department has made a lot of progress over the past two years, and is on track to grow even more, Smith said, and the raises included in his proposed budget will go a long way in helping the department recruit, train and keep a new generation of police officers.

A proposed budget, however, is just a starting point, and the decision whether to fund the raises will ultimately be up to the City Council, which is tasked with passing each year’s budget by Sept. 30. It is common practice for expenses in the proposed budget to far exceed projected revenues and have the council make cuts until the numbers are balanced. For the current fiscal year, the council needed to cut more than $10 million before finalizing the budget.

Council members will be meeting with each department over the next several weeks to review the proposed numbers and decide where cuts can be made. Councilman George Thomas on Tuesday forewarned department heads to come prepared to identify 5% to 10% of their requested budgets that can be cut.

Smith said he wanted the community to be aware of the raises and why they were included so residents could share their support, either for or against the idea, with their elected council member and help them reach a decision on how to proceed.

“I think that its imperative that we make sure it’s out there in the public so the public can respond to the council people and encourage them to help us incentivize and increase our police department,” he said. “That’s all it is. It’s just a plan to help our police department grow.

“That’s all we have to do. If we can grow our police department, that’s going to help us be a safer city.”