A five-year-old agreement to pay 10 cents more an hour to Baltimore police officers working evening and night shifts will be honored today when the Board of Estimates authorizes $477,528.80 to cover the years when the differential wasn’t paid.

The lump sum settles a longstanding dispute between the city and Lodge No. 3 of the Fraternal Order of Police, which filed a grievance against the city.

Back in 2007, the police department agreed to increase the pay differentials for evening and night shifts by 10 cents an hour, but “due to an administrative error, the shift differential change was not made in the system effective July 1, 2007,” according to the spending board’s agenda.

It took the city four years to correct the error, even after the mistake was pointed out by the police union.

The nearly $500,000 going to an undisclosed number of police officers today will “compensate the employees at the correct shift differential rate from the first payroll period after July 2007 through the payroll period ending June 1, 2011,” the board agenda states.

Robert Cherry Jr., president of FOP Lodge 3, was not available for comment this morning.