(FARGO, ND) – The Public Safety Sales Tax in the City of Fargo, passed by voters earlier this year, will bring in an estimate eight million dollar in revenue in 2026.
City of Fargo Finance Director Susan Thompson said that’s based on current estimates regarding the value of the quarter-cent tax.
“We estimate a quarter-cent equals approximately $8.5 million in 2025,” she told commissioners and city staff at a special Fargo City Commission meeting. The revenue, under current estimates, would grow to more than $11 million ten years from now.
The process of getting to this point with the issue regarding the sales tax has been in process for months.
““We really started this work back in January,” Fargo City Administrator Michael Redlinger said. “From March to present day, our teams have really been underway with several extensive collaborations.”
While specifics of the tax were discussed, so were current and future issues relating to Fargo Fire and Police Departments.
Fargo Police, Fire pay discussed
Among those discussions has been pay.
The last Fargo Fire Department payment structure adjustment happened in 2018.
“Substantially, what we have in place today has been in place since 2018,” Redlinger said. “It simply has not kept pace with market conditions and demands across our region.”
He said the Fargo Police Department has also experienced ‘an exponential increase in growth’ over the last decade-plus.
“Our community growth has simply outpaced our ability, at the City of Fargo, to invest the necessary revenues to meet the staffing needs of the department,” Redlinger said.
Fargo’s firefighters pay ranges from $58,706 to $79,789, while captains range in pay from $73,936 to $104,832.
Fargo Police officers are paid at a range between $63,357 to $93,746, while captains pay ranges from $93,101 to $132,205.
The City is working to make changes to the pay structures, with those implementations on target for early July.
“We plan to identify a core group of approximately 15 cities, and that would narrow our scope for future regional compensation and benefit surveys,” City of Fargo Human Resources Director Jill Minette said.
Future growth of Fargo Fire, Police
Redlinger highlighted Fargo Police Chief David Zibolski’s goal of 1.6 sworn officers per 1,000 population in his remarks.
In his remarks, Zibolski said that, in 2025, the pay plan is just one of the many things that will be funded by the Public Safety Sales Tax. The department will also look to add a new police operations technician; along with the Axon Draft One software, which generates draft report narratives using artificial intelligence and body-worn camera audio from the department’s Axon body-worn cameras already in use.
Mobile police vehicle barriers will also be purchased by the tax funds, along with the Peregrine system, which allows officers more efficient use of data. The funds in 2025 will also allow for the fit-up of both police headquarters crime centers and a motorcycle unit.
In 2026, public safety sales tax funds will be used to fund 10 positions in the police department – three lieutenants, one sergeant, five officers and a police wellness coordinator – bringing the force’s total employees to 231.
Over the next two years, the sales tax will fund a total of eight new positions for the fire department, along with one new reclassification/promotion.
The new positions include six in 2025, three captains and three fireefighters, all assigned to downtown fire protection; and two in 2026, a firefighter and fire data analyst. The reclassification or promotion would be of a fire training captain.
Alerting system upgrades for fire stations would happen in 2025 along with a fire facility study.
