Selectmen Reject Request For Four More Cops

By Marianne Sullivan
Published on 11/11/2004

MADISON- In a special joint meeting with the Board of Police Commissioners, the Board of Selectmen has rejected a request to add four more certified officers to the Police Department. The police commission sought to increase the number of sworn officers from the present 24 to 28. The vote came after a meeting that lasted more than four hours--two hours of which were conducted in a closed executive session in which the selectmen and the police commissioners discussed the status of the town's current contract negotiations with the police union. For First Selectman Tom Scarpati and other members of the Board of Selectmen, the present police union contract and departmental work rules are the major stumbling blocks in efforts to control personnel costs within the department. The Board of Police Commissioners, however, believes the 24-person department is straining its overtime budgets, increasing the department's response times, has the potential to compromise public safety, and is placing addition stress on officers who are working additional shifts to meet manpower levels. The addition of four officers would cost $171,752 in salaries for a full year, not including insurance or pension benefits. Funds would also be required for screening of applicants and equipping the new personnel. Annualized, the total request would be $184,400. Both Robert Cerosky, chairman of the police commission, and Police Chief Paul Jakubson, cited the department's escalating overtime costs as one major reason for their request. "In the first three months of this fiscal year, from July 1 to Sept. 30, the department has already spent $61,504 in overtime," Cerosky said. If the department continued at that pace, the overtime budgets could reach $246,000 for the year. "There are two or three ways to look at this situation," Cerosky told the selectmen. "We can add more officers, or we can change our present manpower coverage requirements, or we can find some combination of the two." He reminded the selectmen that the commission and the chief had already reduced minimum manpower policies and moved shift supervisors out of the department and into the field on every shift. "Yet we still have overtime issues," he said. Cerosky also reminded the selectmen, "No manpower study was actually done when our budget was cut this year." Until this fiscal year, the Police Department had been operating with fulltime positions for 28 officers. The boards of selectmen and finance cut that authorization, in effect, to 24. To reach that number, two veteran offices accepted early retirement packages, one officer accepted a position with another department, and a fourth resigned following a departmental internal investigation. A Bargaining Issue (bold subhead) Scarpati contended, "The issue that is driving this discussion and this request is overtime...The question is, how is overtime required, administered and approved?" As Chief Jakubson explained each overtime account within the department's budget, Scarpati added, "We are spending the majority of this overtime money for vacation replacement...It's the big number. What can you do about it?" Jakubson responded, "Manpower scheduling becomes a balancing act. Because of the age of our department, officers on average receive four weeks of vacation each year." And, the chief said, because the department is a 24-7 operation, it is necessary to replace vacationing officers, often with a patrolman who would be working an overtime shift. Scarpati characterized the problem as "a major restriction within the [union] collective bargaining agreement...we are paying for a significant amount of lost time here." Jakubson agreed. "We are operating at the minimum levels virtually all the time now. It's a collective bargaining issue. Do you want to take it to the mat?" The first selectman said he wanted the police commission to put in place "a process whereby that account can be managed...Put something in place. Try it for six months or a year. If I thought for one minute that adding an officer would eliminate the overtime I would jump at it, but I don't believe that for a minute. Overtime is a lollipop. In some cases, it's as much as an officer's base pay, and with the present union contract that overtime is now built into their pension benefits. Adding officers will not decrease overtime." Police Commissioner Craig Caplinger responded, "I know that money is driving this whole discussion...but adding four officers to the department will cost the [average] homeowner about $1 a week in additional taxes. I don't think that is too much to pay." Fillmore McPherson, chairman of the Board of Finance, was sitting through the meeting. He answered, "There is not an interest group in this town that does not put forward the same numbers, whether it be requests for teachers or coaches or a senior center, but when added together it presents an increase in the mill rate that many residents find they cannot afford."