By John Nickerson
Staff Writer
August 6, 2007
NORWALK - Rocketing police overtime costs were turned around in the second half of the last fiscal year, officials said.
The costs dropped $173,000 from the previous fiscal year.
Finance Director Thomas Hamilton raised an alarm in January, when he said the police department's overtime account was threatening a $1,038,000 deficit for the 2006-07 fiscal year. It could end up at $2.483 million, Hamilton said.
By Jan. 4, the midpoint of the fiscal year, the department already had spent $1.28 million in overtime, or 88 percent of its budget for the year, Hamilton said.
The police department spent $2.335 million in overtime, or $893,000 over budget, for the fiscal year that ended June 30, Hamilton said last week. That was a "pretty good turnaround," he said.
During the 2005-06 fiscal year, police spent $2.508 million in overtime, Hamilton said.
"I'm pretty happy with where the department ended up," he said. "I think the chief and the rest of the department made a concentrated effort to bring down OT spending, particularly in the second half of the year."
Besides cutting overtime costs by 6.9 percent, Chief Harry Rilling raised $200,000 in federal asset forfeiture funds, Hamilton said.
Mayor Richard Moccia said that was "like using the bad guys' money to offset the cost of putting extra officers on the street."
With the asset forfeiture money, taxpayers paid $2.135 million in overtime costs - a 15 percent decrease from what they paid the year before, Hamilton said.
Moccia said Rilling was made aware of the overtime problem in the winter.
"They really concentrated on it and they did a good job without reducing services," Moccia said. "It is very gratifying that everybody responded to keep overtime down without reducing services."
Last week, Rilling acknowledged that overtime costs are high. But since he took office 12 years ago, the department's overtime account was audited four or five times without any finding that spending was "irresponsible" or "unnecessary," Rilling said.
"We take our responsibility seriously to keep within budget and costs down," he said. "The overtime spent by this department is spent with the purpose of protecting the public and providing an effective response to narcotics sales and investigating serious crime."
Much of the drop in overtime spending can be attributed to a slight decrease in the number of homicides and violent crimes last year, Rilling said. He credited officers with solving major crimes and making more arrests.
"We tightened our belts and cut overtime where we could while maintaining the level of officers on the street," Rilling said. "I give a lot of credit to the division commanders and other officers who did a great job limiting overtime to only that which was necessary."
A shortage of officers drives up overtime, he said.
Although the department has an authorized strength of 182 officers, the $17.3 million budget does not fund each position, Rilling said. With several recent retirements, one officer fired, one on administrative leave and another at the police academy, the department has 161 active officers, he said.
Eight recruits are scheduled to begin 24 weeks of academy training by the end of October, but it will take at least a year to get them on the street, Rilling said.
This year, he began a new approach to keeping overtime costs down.
At the first staff meeting of each month, each division commander receives a budget analysis showing how much overtime was used and how much is left in their budget, Rilling said.
But can the department cut overtime spending by $744,000 to hit their budget target of $1.591 million?
"We are going to do our best to try," Rilling said.
Copyright © 2007, Southern Connecticut Newspapers, Inc.