Derby police once again among highest earning city employees

DERBY — Derby police officers are once again among the highest earning government employees in the city, with Water Pollution Control Authority employees coming in at a distant second because of overtime pay.

Police Officer Justin Walker earned the top spot within the department with total earnings of $148,887.46 in 2020 including overtime and outside police work, according to a list of salaries released to Hearst Connecticut Media.

He beats out 2019’s top earning police officer, Michael Baldo, who in 2020 made $142,256.34.

Mayor Richard Dziekan said that despite the high overtime costs racked up by the police department, the city is actually saving money.

“Union contracts negotiated the salaries and benefits with the city. At the beginning of the current contract, the police union took a zero percent pay raise for the first year which resulted in substantial savings to the taxpayer of Derby,” Dziekan said.

The mayor said that police officers also work for private companies, including at job sites. Andrew Baklik, chief of staff to the mayor, confirmed that those companies reimburse the city for outside work. The city includes that money in overall earnings for the officer.

But the mayor did say that they are trying to lessen the amount of overtime.

Derby Police Chief Gerald Narowski did not respond to a request for comment.

The next group of top earners were workers in the WPCA’s wastewater treatment plant. While WPCA Superintendent Edward Abel earned $113,490.28, a plant employee was paid more than $28,000 in extra pay including overtime. Another employee earned more than $19,000 in extra pay.

Abel said that there’s a good reason for the overtime.

“We never had guys on standby before, or getting standby pay, so I had to calculate it,” Abel said.

He said that the plant is outdated and needs major upgrades. That has led to workers needing to spend extra time to fix broken down parts and also work on weekends, something which hadn’t been done before.

WPCA Chair Jack Walsh said the plant has seen a decrease in overtime pay for the latest budget and has spent less than half of its current overtime budget for the fiscal year that began in July 2020.

“Year to year, we’re actually lower than last fiscal year,” Walsh said.

Derby Public Schools did not have a salary list available at the time, which if included, would drastically alter the rankings since public school employees were the highest earning city workers in 2019.