At its regular meeting tonight, Apr. 10, the Mesquite City Council will consider approving a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the Mesquite Police Officers Association (MPOA) that will set wages and benefits for the union beginning with the new fiscal year July 1.

The Mesquite Citizen Journal recently obtained salary and benefit information for employees and managers assigned to the Police Department, Corrections, Animal Control, and the Communications Dispatch Center.

The data reflects employment costs for Calendar Year 2011 rather than information isolated to fiscal years. That makes it difficult to compare it to budgetary data that's developed based on projected costs from July 1 to June 30 of each year.

For instance, overtime costs for the four areas reflected in the calendar year data shows a total expenditure of $293,889.

Comparing that to the Fiscal Year 2011-2012 budget adopted in May 2011 shows total expenditures for overtime costs projected at $199,800 for July 1, 2011 to June 30, 2012.

It's also worth noting that some employees assigned to the Dispatch Center and Animal Control are classified as "regular" employees and

not "Police" employees even though those departments are under the supervision of the Police Chief on the City's organizational chart.

Regular employees are included in a different employee union contract while Police employees are included in the MPOA contract.

After horror stories about abusive practices in managing call back pay, on call pay, and other peripheral salary expenditures by public employees in nearby Nevada localities, it appears that's not happening in Mesquite.

Call-back pay for the entire Police Department totaled $7,774 for the calendar year. On-call pay amounted to $7,166. Shift differential pay came to $19,825, holiday pay was $53,831, vacation sell back was only $4,524 (one person), and sick leave sell back added up to $8,789. The City has limited the amount of sick leave and vacation time employees can sell back over the last few years.

MPD salary information for calendar year 2011 is available through this link.

All salary and benefit information was supplied by the City of Mesquite.

[Editor's note: Salary and benefit information for all other City employees and managers will be released at a later date.]