At the June 9 Mayor and Council meeting, we voted to approve a 10% across-the-board increase to the police salary scale, while leaving two officer positions vacant. That was the first of three steps we discussed at a council workshop on police recruitment and retention on June 2. The other two are to overhaul the police department’s pension system and to re-fill the vacant officer slots.
The vote on the pay increase was unanimous, while the other two steps have not been taken yet. We’re expecting to consider the pension change as part of the budget process next year. Filling the two officer positions will also involve a budget vote, but its timing is less predictable because it depends on when the department identifies good potential recruits or lateral hires.
The immediate reason for starting this three-step plan is because Brunswick typically loses a few good officers each year or two to other departments with higher pay and/or better benefits. We often hear from the departing officers that they enjoy serving in a smaller community like ours. But when the gap in pay and benefits gets too wide, it’s hard to ask people not to take an alternative that makes more financial sense for them and their families.
And when officers leave, the job gets tougher for the rest of the department. For most of 2023 and 2025, we only had 15 officers working out of an authorized 18. Earlier this year, we only had 12 working while two were on extended medical leave (the situation has since improved a bit). Those reduced numbers make the patrol shifts more demanding because the department is still obligated to ensure public safety 24/7—and that’s before factoring in community events that require a larger police presence. If more officers resign because they’re burned out, we end up in a vicious cycle.
Longer term, it’s important for Brunswick to maintain a motivated, disciplined, and professional police force. It’s also good for us to have a mix of young and experienced officers. Currently, we often hire officers who have retired from another department and want to continue police work at a slower pace. Better pay and a better retirement plan can make Brunswick more attractive for new recruits or mid-career officers.
Before this raise Brunswick was fourth out of the five departments in Frederick County in terms of pay: higher-paying than Thurmont but lagging Mount Airy, Frederick City, and the County Sheriff’s Office. It’s unlikely that Brunswick will ever out-pay Frederick and the Sheriff’s Office, but we should certainly be able to compete with Mount Airy, Thurmont, and other small or mid-size towns in the region. The 10% increase approved in June puts Brunswick’s pay scale ahead of Mount Airy’s and makes the tradeoff with the two big departments—somewhat less pay for the chance to work in a smaller-town environment—more reasonable than it was the last few years.
Better pay and a better retirement plan can make Brunswick more attractive for new recruits or mid-career officers.
The next step is the pension system. Brunswick is now the only department in Frederick County that doesn’t use the Maryland Law Enforcement Officer Pension System (LEOPS) for officers’ retirements. Our police department has wanted to adopt LEOPS for many years because, among other things, it allows officers to collect retirement benefits after 25 years on the force rather than 30. That difference matters to young and mid-career officers planning their law enforcement careers.
The plan now is to transition to LEOPS in the next fiscal year beginning July 1, 2027. It isn’t cheap. Though we won’t know exactly what it will cost until an actuarial study is complete, the department estimated it as an additional $315k annually over what we pay now for police pensions. That cost is what has kept Brunswick from switching to LEOPS for so long.
The third step is to hire officers to fill the two vacancies we chose not to fill this year. We don’t know the exact cost for that, either, as it will depend on whether the new hires are recruits from the academy or experienced officers coming as lateral hires from another department. But we’re likely looking at $130-150k initially per year in salaries for the two positions combined, plus benefits.
These three steps are a big commitment: each are yearly expenses that will become a long-term part of Brunswick’s budget. I want to make sure in particular that adding them doesn’t prevent us from allocating an adequate amount for road maintenance (which I talked about in my post about the FY27 budget), and I want to also be confident that there is enough room in the budget to continue providing occasional cost-of-living raises for other City employees. Brunswick’s tax base has been growing as we have brought in new residents and businesses, though: tax revenues increased by $1.1 million between the past two fiscal years without an increase to the City’s rate. So, we are in a good position now to take on those costs.
If we succeed in carrying out all three steps of this plan, though, it still won’t mean that the Brunswick Police Department is 100% set for the future. Because Brunswick is growing, our PD will have to grow with it. Other police departments will also keep up the competition by eventually raising their own salary scales, putting pressure on us to increase ours again.
That all said, I reckon that taking the three main steps that we laid out over the next couple of years will put us on a good footing to meet those future needs as they come. I was glad to vote for the first of those and look forward to deliberating further on the next ones.
You can see the presentation for the June 2 workshop here.
The salary scale we approved is on page 17 of the June 9 Mayor & Council packet here.
You can watch archived videos of both the meetings here.