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Milford council delays budget adoption after heated debate over police pay grades and staffing data
Summary
Milford City Council paused final action on the FY26 budget after weeks of debate over proposed pay-grade changes for police lieutenants and captains, disputed benchmarking data from a consultant, and council direction to departments to find funding without raising employee insurance costs or broadly increasing taxes.
Milford City Council left its fiscal 2026 budget unsettled Monday after a prolonged discussion about pay for police lieutenants and captains, the reliability of a consultant's staffing data and whether the city can fund proposed increases without raising taxes or employee insurance costs.
The council did not adopt the budget and instead directed city departments to "scrub" their FY26 requests and return with options to fund the police adjustments. Several council members said they expect staff to start from a "worst-case" cost estimate and then trim back if needed rather than assume new taxes or higher employee premiums.
The debate focused on three items: whether to raise police lieutenants' and captains' pay grades to prevent them from "capping out," the accuracy and availability of underlying comparator data from the consultant Evergreen (and related non-disclosure constraints), and how to fund any increase so the rest of the workforce is treated equitably.
Chief Ash, who said the department has been rebuilding and training its sworn…
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