The wallets of Freeport police officers will be a little heavier in 2023 after the Town Council unanimously approved pay raises across the department Tuesday evening.

The move, which came despite the fact that there are still 18 months remaining on the police union’s contract, will increase entry-level salaries by 6% and top-end salaries by 5% retroactive to Jan. 1. According to Town Manager Peter Joseph, the raises were necessary to help Freeport keep up with an “escalating arms race of raises in police departments across the region.”

The pool of qualified candidates for policing jobs has dried up throughout the country in recent years, leaving departments struggling to maintain full staffs, according to local police chiefs.

The town websites for Freeport, Brunswick and Topsham all currently list openings for officers.

“Ten, 15 years ago we would have 50 or more applications for one or two open positions,” Joseph told the Town Council Tuesday. “Now we are lucky … if we have five applicants.”

Department heads have offered several explanations for the nationwide decline in prospective officers, including increased criticism of policing in the wake of the George Floyd protests and younger workers’ reluctance to take on the stress and unusual hours common in the law enforcement field.

“It does take a special person,” Brunswick Police Chief Scott Stewart told the Times Record in November. “When I train new officers, I tell them nobody has ever called me and said, ‘Hey, come on over, I’m having a great day.’”

Members of Freeport’s Town Council were hopeful Tuesday that pay raises would help counteract those trends and allow the department to attract new recruits and retain experienced officers.

“I’m eager to get something like this going so that we can fix the one piece of this that we can fix easily,” said District 1 Councilor Dan Piltch.

Freeport’s previous hourly wage for a first-year officer was $25.44, which was lower than wages offered by about two-thirds of the 16 nearby departments analyzed by the Freeport police union and department management.

The new first-year hourly wage of $27.97 will move Freeport toward the top third of surveyed communities, alongside towns like Gorham, Scarborough and Yarmouth.

The amended collective bargaining agreement, which will now run through June 2025, includes an additional scheduled 2% raise next January and two additional cost-of-life adjustments in the summers of 2023 and 2024.

The adjustments will cost the town an estimated $17,000 over the rest of the current fiscal year, according to Joseph.