Michele Horne doesn’t want to have the same conversation next year.

The past two years, Concord police have asked for retention bonuses for current sworn officers, pitched as a stopgap measure necessary to keep an already slim staff.

To Horne, the request ceases to be temporary when it becomes an annual ask.

“It’s not stopgap if we’re doing it year after year,” said Horne during a meeting Monday night. “If we’re going to do it year after year we need to be transparent and simply build it into the budget.”

Despite concerns about long-term solutions and requests for a report on spending and staffing, Concord City Council approved $405,000 in retention bonuses for officers. Adding in last year’s allocation, the department has received nearly $1 million on top of its $15.9 million budget, for this purpose.

In part, it’s worked, according to Police Chief Bradley Osgood.

This year, the department lost eight officers compared to 19 departures in 2023. Five left while two officers retired, and one left on disability.

Vacancies, new officers in training, and injuries leave the department lacking 21 percent of its sworn staff, according to a report from Deputy Police Chief Steven Smagula.

“There are very few qualified police applicants to hire and our current police officers are being heavily recruited by several law enforcement organizations across the state and region” he wrote.

The addition of two new police officer positions in 2022, when vacancies were already prominent in the department, made it more difficult to reach full staff.

Retention and recruitment should warrant a larger conversation, at-large Councilor Nathan Fennessy said.

“We need to think about whether there are other things we can do besides throwing money at the issue,” he said.

To Judith Kurtz, also an at-large councilor, that conversation starts by better understanding the challenges of the department.

Last month, the police department gave a presentation to the city council on the new social worker position added earlier this year. Kurtz would like to see a similar explanation for the retention funding.

“The stopgap financial measure will be necessary in perpetuity if we don’t get creative about how to handle the challenges to our staff,” she said. “I think that data is being collected, I would like to be aware of it and understand what’s happening as things move forward.”

The police and fire departments will present to the full council in March or April regarding budgets, according to at-large Councilor Amanda Grady Sexton, who chairs the public safety advisory board. Information about retention bonuses will be included in the presentation, she said.

However, this is not the first time council members have requested more information on the retention bonuses program. Last year, when the initial half million was awarded, then-Councilor Zandra Rice Hawkins asked for a six-month report.

Her motion, which would have required the department to outline the types of service calls and recommendations for staffing solutions, failed.

“This is not a problem that we are going to be able to outbid ourselves in the long run, so I think we would do best for the public safety and Concord to start to have those conversations now,” she said then.

Members of Concord’s Fire Department, who said they were representing themselves, also spoke out in favor of the move

Alan Robidas, a battalion chief, described the importance of the relationship between police and fire.

“We know that we can rely on them and likewise they can rely on us,” he said.

In his 23 years working for the city, though, he’s never seen so many officers cycle through the department, he said.

While Robidas spoke, fellow firefighters held up signs in the front row of the council chambers. Unionized Concord firefighters have been without a contract since July 1, after the previous three-year collective bargaining agreement expired on June 30.

“I have seen my fair share of police officers come and go but I don’t feel there’s ever been a time where I so frequently respond to an incident and the patrolman looking back at me is a stranger or an officer that I know who says they are working another double,” he said. “I can’t begin to tell you what a morale killer it is.”