San Diego will give 9-1-1 dispatchers 26.6 percent pay raises over the next three years to avert a staffing crisis that’s slowed responses to emergency calls and prompted public outrage.

The pay hikes are part of a multi-pronged effort by the city in recent weeks that’s included shaking up management of the dispatch center and significant operational changes, including training police officers to take emergency calls when needed.

The changes come in the wake of two 9-1-1 calls in April that went unanswered while a dog fatally attacked an infant in Mira Mesa, and subsequent admissions by the city that San Diego falls short of national response time standards.

The salary hikes will take San Diego dispatchers from being the lowest paid in the county to somewhere near the midpoint, which city officials hope solves recent problems with recruiting and retention.


“I think it’s going to make a significant difference,” Mayor Kevin Faulconer said last week. “It’s all about fixing the problem for the short-term and the long-term. Once we get the great people in the door, we want them to stay with our Police Department for years to come.”

Dispatchers were due 11.6 percent raises as part of a new contract the city forged last fall with the Municipal Employees Association that called for 8.3 percent hikes in July 2018 and 3.3 percent hikes in July 2019.

Faulconer decided this spring that wasn’t enough money to solve the problem, partly based on a recent salary study that found San Diego dispatchers receive about 30 percent less in total compensation than their regional counterparts.

So Faulconer and MEA officials recently agreed to add on another 15 percent in pay hikes – 5 percent next month, 5 percent in January and 5 percent in July 2017 – and make them effective sooner.


The City Council, which recently approved the deal in closed session, is scheduled to finalize it in open session on Tuesday morning. It will cost $4.8 million over the next four years.

Councilman David Alvarez, who has harshly criticized the mayor for not reacting quickly enough or forcefully enough to the dispatcher crisis, said these pay hikes are real progress.

“Raising wages for 9-1-1 dispatchers is a long overdue step in the right direction and this action, along with the new dispatch performance measures approved by the City Council, finally demonstrates that the city is taking the delays in answering 9-1-1 calls seriously,” Alvarez said.

The additional money, coupled with recent management changes that dispatchers have embraced, will make a big difference when it comes to retention, said Michael Zucchet, general manager of the MEA.


“Anybody who is going to leave under these circumstances was probably going to leave no matter what,” said Zucchet, adding that initial reactions to the pay hikes have been strong. “On the other hand, people who were thinking about leaving are going to stay because of this, and that was the goal.”

The city has struggled to solve a similar recruitment and retention problem with police officers, and compensation increases haven’t had the desired effect so far.

But Zucchet said he’s optimistic because the dispatcher pay hikes are being combined with management and operational changes.

He’s referring to the replacement in mid-May of dispatch manager Gerardo Gurrola with police Capt. Jerry Hara, who has bolstered morale with more flexibility on vacations, shift swapping and related issues.


“The old way was ‘we’re in a staffing crisis so nobody gets any days off,’ which created a morale problem, which caused people to leave, which created a worse staffing crisis,” Zucchet said. “Now that has all been turned on its head.”

The changes appear to be making a significant difference based on monthly dispatch data the Police Department began posting amid the public outcry this spring.

The average answer time for calls fell from 15.38 seconds in April to 9.95 seconds in May.

In addition, the city is coming closer to meeting the national standard of answering 90 percent of calls within 10 seconds. In April, 67.41% of calls were answered within 10 seconds, but that increased to 76.2% in May.


Another factor in that progress could be that 48 police officers have received enough dispatcher training in recent weeks to do some form of dispatch work.

But everyone agrees that the centerpiece of any solution must be reducing the number of dispatcher vacancies, which was 22 of the 134 budgeted positions as of June 20.

A Faulconer spokesman said last week that eight new dispatchers have completed background checks and are expected to start work soon, while another 29 are undergoing background checks.