Aragon increasing part time police pay, looking at new body cameras and millage rate increase
The city of Aragon has long been looking to hire new parttime police officers, but with no applicants, the city council recently agreed to increase the pay rate in hopes of drawing in workers.
Those who join Aragon’s force as part-timers will now be paid a starting rate of $15 an hour- up from the $13 being offered before.
The city’s current force is often tasked with working overtime, a dilemma that can both put officers at risk and cost Aragon extra money in timeand-a-half payments. If the increased pay rate does help recruit new officers, they could fill the gaps between shifts and help to rectify both problems.
However, while the pay increase is sure to help it still lags behind the rates being offered by the larger areas surrounding the city. As Aragon Police Chief Paul Mazzuca pointed out during the August 15 meeting, many departments pay their part-time workers the same rates as their full-time workerssometimes as high as $17 an hour.
“The County PD’s starting pay is $17 an hour,” Mazzuca said. “And that’s across the board- whether part-time or full-time. Everybody else that I checked with, their part-time people start at what their fulltime people do.”
Considering increasing the part-time starting rate too much would be antithetical to the city’s goal of cutting back on overtime costs, the group still felt confident in the $15 figure. The pay is less than surrounding areas, but the increase at least puts Aragon on the map for police hopefuls looking to join the force.
The council also heard updates about officer equipment, and while no official action was taken, the group discussed the need for new body cams. The current cameras being used by officers such as Sgt. Christian Cruz have been producing lowquality, nearly-indecipherable video. Other times, the cameras fail to save the content they record at all.
“Our body camera system is horrible,” Cruz said. “I know everything lately has been about money, but I feel like this is a necessity to protect the agency. Not just for shootings, but for things like allegations about misconduct on traffic stops.”
The council members discussed the purchase while passing around a distorted image produced by the camera, and while there seemed to be consensus to buy new ones, there was little confirmation on which fund would support the purchase.
Cruz had prepared a quote from company WatchGuard, but two more quotes from different companies were requested. As the cameras were not official agenda items, official voting and approval won’t take place until the September meeting at the earliest.
Unexpected costs like these seemingly pop-up in Aragon all the time, and to help pay for equipment like cameras and infrastructure like paving, Mayor Garry Baldwin proposed a 1 mill increase to the city’s 2019 millage rate. As the agenda called for only discussion, no voting was done during the meeting.
“It’s my recommendation that we go with a 1 mill increase,” Baldwin said. “Right now we’re just treading water. There’s so much we need to do. In the next 2 to 3 years we’ve got paving coming up.”
At the current millage rate of 11.1, a 1 mill increase would result in a roughly 10% increase in property tax for Aragon citizens. Cedartown recently voted to maintain its 2018 rate of 11.2, and Rockmart’s 2018 millage rate was 8.8.