Which Providence city employees were paid the most in 2023? We broke down the top earners
PROVIDENCE − Police officers dominated the list of Providence's 10 highest-paid city employees in 2023, taking nine of the top 10 slots and one firefighter coming in third.
The highest-paid person in Providence in 2023 was police Lt. Eugene Chin, who supplemented his base salary of $109,568 with $111,316 in overtime and $70,829 in detail pay, making a total of $292,614 in 2023.
That is $23,268 more than fire rescue Lt. Joseph Burke made in 2022 when he topped the salary list at $269,346. Burke is third on the list this year and the only firefighter to crack the top 10.
Firefighters and police officers were well represented in list of the top 100 highest-paid city employees. The city department heads made up seven of the top 100 highest paid city employees, including the city solicitor, the mayor's chief operating officer, the city auditor, the top two finance department officials and the head of the information technology department.
This story is the start of an annual series examining municipal salaries in Rhode Island's cities.
To see all our databases go to databases.providencejournal.com or follow this link for the City of Providence 2023 salary database.
The top 10 Providence city employee salaries in 2023
The listings below include base salary, overtime, detail pay and "other" pay. They are listed in order, with highest first.
Of those who earned a spot on the top 10 salaries, five were on the list for 2022.
Read the story and list for 2022's top earners here.
Eugene Chin, police lieutenant: $292,614 ($109,568 base, $111,316 overtime, $70,829 detail, $900 other, ranked 9 in 2022)
Scott Keenan, police officer: $255,312 ($98,028 base, $53,441 overtime, $102,943 detail, $900 other, ranked 5 in 2022)
Joseph Burke, fire rescue lieutenant: $245,957 ($94,717 base, $150,439 overtime, $0 detail, $800 other, ranked 1 in 2022)
Luis Sanlucas, police captain: $243,685 ($122,941 base, $81,462 overtime, $36,214 detail, $3,069 other, ranked 12 in 2022)
Richard Fernandes, police captain: $233,918 ($127,465 base, $102,128 overtime, $3,425 detail, $900 other, rank ed11 in 2022)
Flavio Tavares, police officer: $226,508 ($83,912 base, $41,021 overtime, $101,069 details, $500 other, ranked 6 in 2022)
Michael Imondi: police officer, $226,347 ($91,264 base, $25,353 overtime, $108,629 details, $1,100 other, ranked 13 in 2022)
Vincent Sollitto, police sergeant: $224,534 ($106,072 base, $65,024 overtime, $52,339 detail, $1,100 other, ranked 31 in 2022)
Oscar Perez, police chief: $219,152 ($218,052 base, $0 overtime, $0 detail, $1,100 other, ranked 70 in 2022)
Ralph Abenante IV, police officer: $218,777 ($86,573 base, $7,235 overtime, $117,554 detail, $1,100 other, ranked 10 in 2022)
The original data provided by the city included multiple entries for workers with multiple job titles and combined school and municipal employees. The database used to analyze the data, available here, combined income sources for employees with multiple entries, many of whom changed positions during the year. The original spreadsheet provided by the city is available here.
The biggest base salaries in Providence
The people who made the most money in base pay were mostly city department heads:
Oscar Perez, police chief: Base pay $218,052, $1,100 other pay, total $219,152
Derek Silva, fire chief: Base pay $207,349, $800 other pay, total $208,149
Lawrence Mancini, chief financial officer: Base pay $195,702, total $195,702
Hugh Clements Jr., former police chief: Base pay $189,192, total $189,192 (left in Jan. 2023)
Dana Jeffrey, city solicitor: Base pay $184,520, total $184,520, rank 39
Of the top 500 earners, all but 46 worked for the police department or the fire department. That list includes Mayor Brett Smiley, making $149,057, ranked 168. Everyone in the top 500 made over $116,000 a year.
The top 500 earners represented 38% of the base pay and 44% of the gross pay for the city in 2023. They represented 19% of all the people on the city's payroll in 2023.
While there were 2,703 people on Providence's payroll, 907 made less than $21,000 a year, 811 made less than $10,000 and 686 made less than $5,000. Many of those appeared to be temporary or part-time employees, while 33 people who worked details in the police department received only detail pay and no salary. An additional 89 people on the city's payroll, who made small amounts, had no base pay, instead earning "other" pay, often for workers compensation.
Making $200,000 or more a year
Out of the 2,703 people on Providence's payroll in 2023:
16 made more than $200,000 a year
155 made more than $150,000 a year
716 made more than $100,000 a year
Who earned the most overtime in Providence in 2023?
Overtime spending in Providence has been growing year over year. In 2021 it was $18 million, in 2022 it was $21 million and in 2023 it was $24 million.
Spending on base wages also increased, up to $131.5 million in 2023 from $127.7 million in 2022.
How did overtime break down?
Police officers and firefighters earned $21.8 million of the $24.2 million spent in overtime, or 90%
Firefighters earned the most in overtime, $11.8 million (49% of total overtime)
Police officers earned $10 million in overtime (41% of total overtime)
Dispatchers earned $488,243 in overtime
The top 200 overtime earners were all firefighters (124) or police officers (76)
There were 587 people in the police department, 427 people in the fire department and 73 in the communications (dispatch) department. This includes firefighter trainees, police recruits, 33 people only working details, clerks and parking enforcement officials.
The top 200 overtime earners raked in $11 million in overtime
That $11 million in overtime represents 46% of the total overtime paid out for the city
The person who made the most overtime and wasn't a police officer or firefighter was Highway Superintendent Sal Solomon, who made $34,349 in overtime on top of his $122,748 salary, for a total of $157,096. His total salary rank was 121. His overtime pay rank was 280.
A total of 1,281 people earned overtime, with the least amount being $19.
Why is the city spending $22 million in overtime?
Fire Chief Derek Silva and Police Chief Col. Oscar Perez said both of their departments face the same fundamental problems: not enough employees.
"The job is 24/7, and it's had a lot to do with minimum manning, call back, holding people over," Perez said. "When we have protests in the city, parades, festivals, public safety is not negotiable."
The fire department also has minimum staffing requirements, dictated by the number of firefighters needed to be on a truck or in an ambulance. To meet those minimum staffing requirements, firefighters have to be held over on their shifts or called in to work overtime.
Waves of employees
In Providence, firefighters tend to be hired in cohorts, after the city sends a group to the fire academy. Up until last year, the city had not hired any new firefighters, but it lost 104 through general attrition, mostly retirements, Silva said.
In 2018, the city had 452 firefighters and right now, it has 376, Silva said.
"When the new mayor came in, he recognized the need to hire," Silva said. "Last year we hired 32 new firefighters and we have an academy of 38 who graduate July 19."
This ebb and flow of employment is connected to how Providence has, and continues, to hire firefighters and to some extent, police officers: By putting a big group of 20, 40 or even more would-be firefighters through the academy. Many of them will finish out their careers in the city and retire around the same time.
Silva said they are trying to plan to hire more fighters, and send more to the academy, every year, to create a laddering affect so the impact of a cohort retiring in 20 years is not as pronounced as it is now. The attrition rate is currently 22 firefighters a year.
The reduction in overtime by more firefighters won't be reflected in this year's academy, but by the time 2024's academy graduates, it should make a dent in the use of the overtime budget.
For the police department, it's much the same story. The department loses close to 30 officers a year and is hoping to start offsetting those losses by sending recruits to the police academy.
Forced overtime
By not having enough firefighters or police officers, supervisors require their employees to work overtime to fill in on shifts that should have a police officer or firefighter working a regular shift, but don't, Perez and Silva said.
"I much prefer having well rested firefighters instead of having those same firefighters working extra hours," Silva said.
Making more in overtime than regular pay
Three police officers and two firefighters earned more in overtime than their base pay.
Fire rescue Lt. Joseph Burke earned $150,439 in overtime, above his base pay of $94,726, for a total pay of $292,614 (rank 3)
Police Lt. Eugene Chin earned $111,316 in overtime, above his base pay of $109,568, for a total pay of $245,957 (rank 1)
Fire rescue technician Daniel Brown earned $99,581 in overtime, above his pay of $92,942, for a total pay of $194,173 (rank 22)
Police Sgt. Jonathan Kantorski earned $86,328 in overtime above his pay of $64,676, for a total pay of $152,140 (rank 145)
Police officer Louis Prete earned $86,328 in overtime, above his pay of $77,771, for a total pay of $169,548 (rank 84)
Perez and Silva gave the same reason for why these five employees made so much money in overtime: They volunteered to work shifts that their colleagues would otherwise have been forced to work.
Joseph Burke is an outlier in the department, working an additional 2,425 hours, or an average of 83 hours a week, Silva said. While firefighters work 24-hour shifts, a normal 40-hour work week equates to 2,080 hours a year.
The average amount of overtime, much of it forced, is 500 hours a year for firefighters, Silva said.
In the police department, the two of the three biggest overtime earners volunteer to work shifts that otherwise would result in forced overtime for their colleagues. Police Sgt. Jonathan Kantorski retired and most of his pay was severance, Perez said.
"Eugene Chin, he volunteers to do the overtime, and his work is always monitored by other officers, but he comes ready, works around the clock, meets the demands for service, and volunteers so others don't get burned out," Perez said.
Detail pay a big driver of police, fire pay
In Rhode Island, municipalities charge private companies and the state to provide police details, and detail pay does not come out of a city's budget. In all, city employees, mostly police officers, were paid out $6.9 million in detail pay in 2023.
Many of those earning detail pay from the city earned no other income. In the data provided by the city, their titles are "detail pay."
Those only making detail pay earned a total of $900,468 combined
15 people making only detail pay made over $25,000 and 11 made over $46,000.
The highest detail-pay-only earner was William Dwyer, making $63,438 (rank 1,171)
Public safety department dominates city payroll
The public safety department, including dispatchers, the police department, the fire department, emergency management personnel and staff in the commissioner of public safety's office, accounted for 1,105 people on the payroll, with 996 people making $40,000 a year or more.
Removing detail pay from the calculations, public safety employees made $107.7 million of the total $158.7 million in payroll, or 68%
Public safety employees made $84.4 million in base wages compared to $47.1 million for the rest of the city's employees.
Public safety employees accounted for 41% of the city's personnel and made 68% of the money (excluding detail pay and detail-pay-only employees)
The average public safety employee wage without detail pay was $100,483 (the 33 detail-only police workers were removed for this calculation)
The average non-public-safety employee wage without detail pay was $32,701 (the 89 employees who had no regular pay were removed for this calculation)
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Reach reporter Wheeler Cowperthwaite at wcowperthwaite@providencejournal.com or follow him on Twitter @WheelerReporter
This article originally appeared on The Providence Journal: Providence city salaries for 2023: Here's who made the most.
