The Kirkland City Council approved a new three-year agreement with the Kirkland Police Guild during an August meeting that included salary increases and a restructured work schedule.

As part of the three year agreement, traffic officers will work four 10-hour shifts, effective next February. Officers had been working four 12-hour shifts, which were divided into day shifts and overnight shifts. Switching back and forth from day to night was having a negative impact on the officers.

“The way the (old) schedule works is it basically really impacts your body’s natural rhythms,” City Manager Kurt Triplett said. “Everybody was doing that. We were starting to see as the officers got older, it was catching up with them…it was taking a toll on everybody.”

According to Triplett, the department was one of the few remaining in the state to have that type of scheduling.

“There’s two reasons why the schedule is better for the community and the police officers,” he said. “The first one is it’s actually going to make them physically better off and more focused and alert. They’ll work less often, and their bodies will be ready for that shift. They’ll be more focused and productive.”

The second improvement, Triplett said, is that the new schedule better utilizes police resources by scheduling officers around when the majority of calls occur, typically during the day and then in the evening, along with weekend nights.

“In the old shift we had the same eight patrol officers out regardless of when the calls came out,” he said. “It wasn’t an effective use of the force. The Guild and bargaining team said we need these shifts when the officers are on duty when the calls come. As the community, we’re going to see more alert officers who are better focused, and more of them at the right time, so it’s a relocation of the time not just how they worked.”

However, the exact details of how the shifts would be arranged will still need to be worked out, though Triplett added that it will allow them more flexibility as they try it out.

“If we need to tweak it we can,” he said.

“It was hard to switch between nights and days on a regular basis like that,” Deputy City Manager Marilynne Beard said. “Everybody felt it would be a better situation, it would be a healthier work environment.”

The agreement also retroactively raised officer’s monthly rate of base pay by 2.2 percent, with another 2.2 percent increase effective January 2016. According to the bargaining agreement, a senior patrol sergeant’s monthly salary as of January 2014 was $8,279, a senior patrol corporal’s $7,730, while a starting patrol officer made $5,482.

The bargaining also increased the duration of special and temporary assignments and eliminated a $300 per year city contribution to Flexible Spending Account for eligible employees. The account is a voluntary reimbursement program used to pay for medical or dependent care expenses with pre-tax dollars.