5 takeaways: What’s driving Salem’s rising public safety costs amid city budget crisis
Salem’s police and fire departments have close to the same number of employees they had 20 years ago despite more than doubling their spending during that time.
Weeks of reporting by Salem Reporter found that the city’s public safety costs have grown at more than twice the rate of inflation since 2006. The same can be said for overall spending on Salem’s general fund, which currently faces a nearly $14 million shortage and is largely funded by property taxes.
We reviewed two decades of budget data with a focus on key services that the general fund pays for.
Salem Reporter’s findings come as city leaders are preparing to ask voters on the May ballot to approve a property tax levy that would fund services like the library, Center 50+ and parks maintenance, while softening any blow to departments including police and fire in the future.
The levy, if approved, would cost the average Salem homeowner about $229 more per year in property taxes and generate about $14 million for the city in 2026.
Read our full story on the evolution of the city’s budget here:
Here are some key takeaways from our reporting:
1. Salem’s public safety spending has soared while staffing has stayed almost flat
The Salem Police Department’s spending has grown by 125% and the Salem Fire Department’s by 154% since 2006.
That’s compared with a 124% increase in the total general fund budget.
Meantime, police department staffing over 20 years has grown by about 14%, from 222 people to 253.
Most of those employees are sworn officers. The department over that period has never hit a city target of having 1.5 officers for every 1,000 Salem residents – a ratio often considered standard or optimal for West Coast law enforcement.
As a result, Salem Police Chief Trevor Womack in recent years has pulled officers away from investigating nonviolent offenses like property crimes to focus on rising deadly violence and fatal collisions.
Fire department staffing over two decades has grown by 16%, from 161 to 186 people.
Meantime, the number of sworn firefighters on duty each day has dropped slightly from 43 to 41.
While overall fire department staffing has increased over two decades, those additions included staff dedicated only to operations at the Willamette Valley Airport after it introduced commercial air service in October 2023, Salem Fire Chief David Gerboth said. The fire department also hired extra staff to help manage hours worked and fill vacancies to reduce overtime.
The result has been increasingly slower responses by the fire department to emergency calls, which have nearly doubled since 2011.
City leaders are considering closing a fire station in the coming years to balance the budget.
2. Parks, recreation and Center 50+ spending has mirrored inflation with almost no growth in staff
Salem’s spending on parks, recreation services and Center 50+ has increased by 57% since 2006, from about $8 million to $12.6 million budgeted for this year.
That’s nearly even with inflation, which was 60% over the same period.
The three services are a much smaller share of Salem’s budget and have shifted departments over the years, though the city has housed them for much of the last two decades in the Community Services Department. They make up the bulk of the department’s spending.
During that time, their staffing has grown by about 8%, even as the city has added new parks and expanded some services, including a joint homeless outreach team that includes parks and police employees.
3. Public safety spending has heavily outpaced inflation
Police and fire spending grew at more than double the rate of inflation over 20 years.
Salem’s police and fire chiefs both said the agencies’ imbalance of spending and staff is largely due to rising costs.
There are two key reasons for employee costs growing quickly. First, state law requires that government agencies align their wages with those of comparable cities when negotiating union contracts, meaning employees receive pay increases which sometimes outpace inflation.
Salem’s growing obligation to pay for employee pensions has created much of the city’s budget gap. The city will spend $11 million more on pension obligations next year, including $6.6 million more in the general fund. That means pension will cost the city almost $40 million next year, including $25.6 million in the general fund.
The Salem City Council adopted a roughly $191 million general fund budget for 2025.
Gerboth said the fire department’s material costs, such as protective and medical equipment, have also outpaced inflation.
Spending on other departments funded by the general fund, including parks and recreation, has also outpaced inflation for the same reasons, according to Josh Eggleston, the city’s chief financial officer.
4. Overtime pay for public safety services has skyrocketed
Salem police’s overtime spending nearly doubled between 2021 and 2024, from about $1.6 million to $2.9 million. Womack said that increase is largely driven by vacant positions.
Law enforcement agencies across the U.S. saw more officers leaving the profession and fewer people applying for jobs after the Covid pandemic and protests against police brutality. With fewer officers working, large emergencies or special services increasingly require officers working overtime.
But Salem police have since had a record-breaking hiring rate and are slowly filling vacancies, according to Womack.
The police chief said new employee union contracts and specialized services, such as boosted patrols this past summer in areas at high risk of violence, also drive up overtime costs.
Between 2018 and 2024, Salem fire’s overtime spending has grown from around $1 million to $5.9 million.
A key culprit was Falck, the ambulance provider which has served Salem since 2015 and consistently failed to meet its contractually obligated staffing levels. Falck’s slow response times forced the fire department to pick up the slack by putting its medical crews on overtime, racking up about $2.4 million in overtime pay last year.
Not all overtime spending on public safety services is paid for by the city’s general fund.
With Falck’s contract expiring in July 2025, Gerboth said the fire department is hiring 60 employees to bring ambulance service in-house.
The fire chief said overtime spending has also risen due to sick employees needing time off during the pandemic as well as “protected leave,” such as the state’s new paid leave program implemented in 2023. While employees are on paid leave through that program or on family medical leave, their work is generally covered through overtime staffing.
Still, Gerboth said filling vacancies would only shift overtime costs to paying full-time employees.
5. Library spending has seen little growth and staffing has declined
Library spending has grown slightly since 2006, from about $4.1 million to $5.6 million budgeted for this year. That’s far below the pace of inflation.
Meantime, library staff have dropped by about 25%, from 50 to 38.
The city council voted last year to cut seven vacant library positions. Those cuts closed the main branch on Sundays and evenings, and reduced the smaller West Salem branch to two days per week.
Contact reporter Ardeshir Tabrizian: [email protected] or 503-929-3053.
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Ardeshir Tabrizian has covered the justice system and public safety for Salem Reporter since September 2021. As an Oregon native, his award-winning watchdog journalism has traversed the state. He has done reporting for The Oregonian, Eugene Weekly and Malheur Enterprise.
