After salary controversy, Allan Hancock to repost police chief position

Was a new Allan Hancock College Chief of Police worth over $200K? That was a major source of contention at Tuesday’s Board of Trustees meeting.

The Allan Hancock Police Force is made up of about three to five people with several vacancies and the search for a new police chief has hit a few snags along the way.

When faced with a decision to contract out with the Santa Maria Police Department, the numbers spoke for themselves.

“This is really being fiscally irresponsible and it’s an irresponsible use of taxpayer money,” said Yvette Andrade, speaking in opposition of the proposed hire on behalf of CSEA.

Eyebrows were raised when issues with retirement and benefits, pushed the lone police chief candidate’s proposed salary close to $250,000 dollars.

“All of our other administrators would probably turn a frown if we actually approved something like this. So the only people getting this kind of money would be our President and the Chief of Police,” said Andrade.

School officials say they’ve set aside a $157,000 dollar salary for a new chief. Due to the top contender’s current retirement system schedule, hiring the SMPD Sergeant, would tack on an additional $50-90k in benefits and retirement. Which meant the new chief could have raked in anywhere from $207,000 to $247,000 dollars in total salary and benefits.

“What Dr. Walters has done is what we have asked him to do. He shared with us from the very beginning that this position was not going to pay enough and we were not going to attract enough applicants to fill a position. We told him to try anyways,” said said Hilda ZacarÍas, President, AHC Board of Trustees.

The initial job posting showed a max salary of about $118,000 dollars, which is on par with other area colleges when looking at student population.

“Remember when we talk about salaries, remember what we’re asking this person to do,” said ZacarÍas.

“When I look at those numbers and the size of the campuses, especially Ventura, they’re paying their guy $149 and they’ve got 27,000 and we got 10,000 and we can’t find somebody,” said Greg Pensa, Trustee.

A presentation at the meeting laid out salary comparisons between area schools. The document showed that Ventura Community College pays their Police Chief a maximum salary of $149,376 with a student population of 27,395.

Pensa said that Victor Valley College was more in-line with AHC’s situation. Victor Valley pays their chief $128,916 with 9,439 students.

The current interim chief is supposed to wrap up duties in July.

“If we can’t find a police chief we have to have somebody here managing the campus,” said Pensa.

After a unanimous vote, it’s back to the drawing board. The Board of Trustees voted to repost the position, saying the salary is under discussion.

“We didn’t really have two candidates to begin with so If you raise the salary maybe you get more people,” said Dr. Kevin Walthers, Superintendent/President, AHC Board of Trustees.

“If we’re not successful then we’re going to have to have that very difficult conversation about how is safety going to happen on this campus,” said ZacarÍas.

The board plans to ask the Academic Senate to raise the base salary to remain competitive and hopes to have the situation figured out by their September meeting.

In the meantime, the group plans on asking the interim chief to stay on until the beginning of the school year.