The Sheriff wants to give his Metro officers a raise but the idea is sparking controversy. The county says that Metro's salary requests are outrageous.
The county says that a 25.6-percent salary increase for Metro police over four years is unprecedented. But the Police Protective Association believes it's fair and what was negotiated.
"I want the public to understand that nobody has ever taken the job of being an officer to enrich themselves -- to get rich. We're middle class hardworking people like everyone else," said David Kallus, the executive of the Police Protection Association.
He says that Metro police officers deserve a salary increase. Kallus says that the cost of living adjustment known as COLA has been already negotiated at 3.5-percent. With the Public Employee Retirement System known PERS being 3-percent, it totals a 7.15-percent increase in pay for the first year of the police contract.
"If an officer looks at their paycheck before the effective date of this contract of July 1, 2005 and evaluated in the first pay period afterward, he would see a 3.5-percentf increase in his growth salary. That's all. He wouldn't see ten percent. Now he may have a merit raise if he's entitled to it. But not based on his contract," Kallus said.
But Clark County Manager Thom Reilly says no matter how you do the math, it is a 25.6-percent increase in Metro pay over the next four years and the county is uncomfortable with that. "We don't want to go to arbitration but we want to go to a third party fact finder to look at the reasonableness and evaluate this," Reilly said.
The union will still have Metro officers vote on the preliminary negotiations starting on Oct. 17. But at an Oct. 24 Metro fiscal affairs meeting the county will ask not to approve this deal.
If the deal isn't approved on Oct. 24, a fact finding mission will begin in January. Once a deal is negotiated, Metro officers would receive retro pay from last July when the contract was up.