By Leonard Sparks
The Times Herald-Record
NEWBURGH, N.Y. — Tapping reserves. Reducing spending. Hiring more firefighters and police officers.
Those are some of the measures the City of Newburgh is discussing to plug an expected hole in this year’s $44.6 million budget and then reduce fire and police department overtime that is on pace to fall far short of more than $700,000 in hoped-for cuts, Mayor Torrance Harvey said.
Comptroller Kathryn Mack has already instituted a citywide hiring freeze, and Newburgh has roughly $4.4 million in unrestricted, unassigned general fund reserves.
City officials are also exploring raising police officer salaries and identifying federal and state grants to address manpower shortages that fire and police officials blame for increasing overtime, Harvey said.
At its current rate of overtime spending, Newburgh’s police department will fall far short of the $424,000 in savings called for in this year’s budget. Newburgh’s fire department, which was supposed to save $320,000 in overtime this year, is also projected to fall short of its target.
Through June 21, police department overtime stood at $599,691, just $1,448 less than the same point last year. Spending on fire department overtime was $483,284 through June 21, an amount $122,505 higher than last year.
“We’re looking at, if we know that’s going to happen, what will it cost us to look at other options -- increasing the rank and file in both police and fire, and then what does it look like if we were to increase salaries to retain,” Harvey said.
Overtime paid out to Newburgh’s police department totaled nearly $1.6 million in 2017, representing about 20 percent of the $7.7 million in gross department pay last year, according to the comptroller’s office.
Members of Newburgh’s fire department earned roughly $942,400 combined in overtime last year, a figure that is about 16 percent of total gross income for the department.
Acting Fire Chief Terry Ahlers said earlier this month that he has unsuccessfully asked Newburgh’s administration to promote additional officers and hire a “floater” to fill vacancies without paying off-duty personnel overtime.
Overtime to fill just vacation requests for assistant chiefs runs around $57,000 a year, while promoting someone to assistant chief to fill absences would cost $18,000, he said during a July 5 City Council work session.
“By making an $18,000 promotion, we could save at least $40,000 per year just on the assistant chief position,” said Ahlers, an assistant chief whom the city must pay overtime for his duties as acting chief.
The police unions representing Newburgh’s patrol officers and sergeants and lieutenants issued a press release Sunday in which they said overtime costs could be reduced if salaries were raised to prevent manpower shortages and vacancies when officers take higher-paying positions in other municipalities.
Of the 62 officers who left Newburgh’s police department in the last five and a half years, 25 departed for “higher paying, better ‘quality of Profession’ positions” in neighboring departments, the unions said.
In 2003 the city had 103 officers compared to the current 80, according to the unions.
“We’ve got to be creative and innovative in putting our heads together,” Harvey said. “Instead of fighting about it, we got to come together as a community.”
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