UTH on town employee overtime
Cindy Kleist's Underground Town Hall is back from a short hiatus. She's got an interesting list of town employee overtime for FY 2009/2010. I'm not sure of the reasons driving any particular OT. But I'm guessing some of the Police OT is related to the two month long Deegan suspension.
Tim White
4 comments:
A few random points about the police overtime and matters related thereto.
1. Years back, the Police Department required that officers working shifts report 15 minutes early each day, for which NO pay was received. Of course, this was illegal under federal labor law and a correction had to be made.
2. To be fair, any listing of who made what amount of overtime should also include the number of extra hours worked to earn same.
3. This shouldn't need a reminder, but I'll do so anyway. The P.D. is the only Town department that staffs three shifts a day, 365 days a year.
4. There is a calculation for a "staffing factor," that is, how many bodies does it take to fill one position. From one person's availability to fill a position, you must subtract two days off per week, vacation time, sick time, training time, etc. The result being approximately 1.7 - that means you need 1.7 persons to fill one position on a yearly basis. When and if you are short persons to fill the positions, then overtime is required.
5. Road construction jobs, high school sporting events and the like are NOT considered overtime. The responsible parties are billed by the Town for these officer services.
Hopefully, this has been informative.
Address the issue of the Public works employees and their overtime. Add up all of the overtime we could hire another person for less but that is not the issue. We will get the excuse that each PW employee is special and nobody else can do their job. Fine, ask why PW employees have to schedule overtime 2 weeks in advance.
Well managed organizations don't rely on OT because they are able to plan the work and also work the plan. Organizations with lots of unhappy workers who either don't want to move or are unable to find new, better employment often times get jelly bean OT assignments to minimize their crankiness, especially if unionized.
Clearly with projects like the Pool bubble, the boilergate flap, and quickly decaying local roads where manholes and drainage culverts see too susceptible to early failures one just has to question how well managed many town activities really are.
Maybe any excessive OT is really a symptom of problems higher up in the superstructure?
Check out todays Meriden Record-Journal. Wallingford Police lost 3 trained officers to the State Police in recent weeks. Chief Dortenzio states that it is impossible to prevent "poaching" of certifed officers to larger forces because of pay and benefits. He also states that it costs $60,000-70,000 per officer for training that takes a year before the officer can work solo. By law, officers are bound to a 2 year commitment to the hiring and training PD.
How many positions will we have open this year? (3-5). At $60,000 per person, we are looking at about $300,000 to maintain our CURRENT level of protection.
Does anyone else see something wrong with this?
Post a Comment