NOTE TO READERS: Scroll below to access the searchable Concord salary database. If you’re using a smartphone, hold your phone in landscape mode to get the best results.

With a jump in overtime for firefighters and a retention initiative among police officers, more than half of the employees working in public safety took home more than $100,000 last year.

Concord’s overtime spending citywide grew by more than 20% from 2023 to 2024, while overall spending on wages and benefits rose by about 7%. The vast majority of that overtime increase went to firefighters and police, with 13 of 19 employees making more than $150,000 coming from those two departments. At least one firefighter made more in overtime than in regular wages/.

Comparing the rank and file members of both departments, overtime spending on police rose about 2% from 2023 to 2024, or just under $34,000, but officers received more than $700,000 in retention payments, paid in lump sums of $5,000 twice. Overtime rose more than 49% for firefighters, or roughly $784,000.

Despite the difference in overtime, police officers in Concord got a much bigger pay jump, largely due to the retention bonuses. The average police officer made around $108,000 in total pay in 2024, a 25% increase from the year before. Average firefighter pay rose about 9% to nearly $100,000 in overall compensation in 2024.

Notably, this data is collected by calendar year by the city — it may not line up with tallies in the fiscal year budget, which starts July 1. It also can be skewed slightly in both directions by those who did not work the full year and retirement payouts.

A searchable database of city employees and their wages is attached to the online version of this story.

As has long been the case, the city’s highest paid employee in 2024 was City Manager Tom Aspell. He was paid $235,200, a roughly 4% raise year-over-year. His two deputies, Matt Walsh and Brian LeBrun, were each paid $173,096, placing them in the top ten highest paid city employees.

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Concord’s chiefs of police, Bradley Osgood, and fire, John Chisholm, each have an annual salary of $149,344, putting them outside the city’s top 20 earners. Multiple members of their departments take home more money than the chiefs, who don’t earn overtime and did not receive retention bonuses.

For reference, Concord School District Superintendent Kathleen Murphy’s salary is currently $190,000. Former Governor Chris Sununu’s pay totaled about $163,500 in 2024.

For the first time since 2021, no women were included in the city’s top ten highest earners. Police officer Melissa Pfefferle was the highest paid woman in the city for the fourth straight year, receiving $170,977.

The average individual city employee was paid about $78,000 in 2024, while the median income for full-time working men in the city was $64,486 and $51,111 for women, per the latest census estimates. In total, 156 people on the city payroll took home six figures last year, up from 115 the year before. All but a handful of those crossing that threshold work in public safety.

When requesting the the City Council for a second round of retention bonuses for police officers in December, Osgood said that the first round of payments had helped stabilize morale and staff outflow.

Among firefighters, however, increases in pay were tied mostly to rising overtime.

Both of Concord’s public safety departments have said they’re experiencing workforce shortages, but while the police department has a higher raw vacancy rate — 14 empty positions compared to eight at fire, according to a January report — firefighters are working the most overtime in Concord.

Of the 26 city employees who clocked more than 3,000 hours last year — or on average a roughly 58-hour work week — 21 were firefighters, according to 2024 wage data. Most were firefighter-paramedics or -advanced EMTs, a higher medical training level and one that Chisholm previously explained has been harder to retain. One fireman logged more than 4,000 hours in 2024 — the equivalent of a 77-hour work week, every week – earning $ 91,621 in overtime compared to $ 82,992 in regular wages.

Vacancies in the fire department have meant more forced overtime, which is driving people out of the department, necessitating even more overtime, according to a City Manager’s report from January.

“The resulting burnout is noticeable and has caused a sharp decline in morale,” Aspell wrote. “This compounding problem is near a critical breaking point.”

A similar cycle was cited by Osgood in requesting retention bonuses for police.

Concord Firefighters are currently in negotiations with the city for a new contract, after the fire officers union went more than six months without one this past fall and winter before an agreement was reached. Retention bonuses were not included in the new contract, but wanting “respect, parity and support” from the city, especially in comparison to financial attention paid to the police department, was a key sticking point.

Catherine McLaughlin can be reached at cmclaughlin@cmonitor.com. You can subscribe to her Concord newsletter The City Beat at concordmonitor.com.