Fraternal Order of Police lodge urges council to investigate HR handling of retroactive pay

Benjamin Paster, president of Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 15, told the City Council that officers have received inconsistent retroactive-pay checks following a binding-arbitration award and that the department’s human-resources office has not provided individualized calculation explanations.

“We were getting a bunch of calls, and people were advising me that the back pays were not calculated correctly,” Paster said. He described a range of errors reported to the lodge: one officer received roughly $67,200 (transcript: “67 her 200 ish dollars”) for two years of back pay, while others received as little as about $357. The transcript reports instances of both underpayments and overpayments; Paster said the city began issuing corrective checks while problems persisted.

Paster said he and lodge members sought a meeting with HR and were told a single HR employee—identified in the transcript as Kim Robertson—had performed the calculations and that personal calculation spreadsheets could not be provided in a timely way. He said requests for one-on-one meetings were delayed and that a labor-management meeting scheduled to address retro pay lacked the HR staffer who performed the calculations.

Paster said the lodge has hired an outside consultant and asked council to “audit or review the behavior of the business administration and the human resources departments” to ensure transparency and correct payments. He described the situation as a morale and retention risk and said officers already worked “out of contract” for about two years while negotiations proceeded.

Council acknowledged the comment on the record but did not vote or direct an immediate audit during the meeting. Paster asked council to exercise its oversight authority to obtain the calculations and explanations the lodge says have been withheld.