Dalton Police Ask for Budget Increase to Cover Staffing, Ammunition Shortfalls
DALTON, Mass. — The Police Department is asking for a $247,000 hike in its budget for fiscal 2023 to cover rising costs of supplies and salaries.
Police Chief Deanna Strout presented the Finance Committee on Wednesday with a proposed spending plan of $1,347,912 for fiscal 2023, which is a 22.44 percent increase from this year.
The department's salary budget was presented as $1,186,710, up from $982,754 this year. The salary budget is still under negotiation between Town Manager Thomas Hutcheson, the Dalton Police Patrol Officers Union Local 906 and the sergeants so the total amount may fluctuate based on these negotiations.
"I've been assured by both sides of that negotiation that these are about as accurate as I can be, they're very, very close to being settled," the police chief said. "We're right there, I don't anticipate much of a change but I can't promise you they're exact."
There is now a contractual wage matrix that is likely to be agreed upon and a 2 percent cost of living increase for an expected 3.75 percent salary increase. There are also negotiations for specialty pay for being field training officers that may be a stipend or percentage but no agreement on those numbers yet.
To offset these increases, Strout is proposing to increase the department's salary budget by $203,956.
Some committee members questioned the overtime budget because of the addition of full-time officers but Strout explained that the Police Department is understaffed because it does not have a good retention rate.
Strout proposed to increase the gross overtime budget line item because the department also is no longer allowed to utilize reserve officers due to the police reform bill that requires everyone to be certified as full time.
The department has cut the reserve officer staff down from five to two. The two reserve officers have full-time jobs and contractually have priority when it comes to what vacancies they would like to work.
Strout argued that previous years were not budgeted correctly at 140 vacancies because they did not include vacation, personal, or sick time, which totals 219 shifts. So the department was going over budget on the gross overtime.
"It's because we're not budgeting properly. You have to budget for what you know your vacancies are going to be," the chief said. "We know that 219 shifts cover vacations, personal time, and they get 15 sick days a year. I budgeted for them to use five each, because that's about the industry standard. We don't have officers calling out sick often. But I feel like five is a reasonable number as opposed to the 15 days that they get. So that's where that 219 shifts come from.
"Like I said, we've just been budgeting lower for that number because we had reserve officers that we can bank on. And as you do see I cut the reserve budget by $21,000."
The department is $27,000 over in the overtime budget as of Feb. 19 because it is filling 80 hours a week.
"So now we have to pay to train and hire and everything else. That's why I'm requesting that increase because I think it's responsible, instead of coming back to everyone at the end of the year," Strout said. "We have two full-time vacancies that we're filling. The reserve officers do work a shift here and there. But it's mostly full-time overtime."
The department also has to budget an additional $20,000 for in-service training to account for the mandated 40-hour requirement but is budgeting for 80 hours due to the high number of young officers.
"I have to get people into schools that they need to be for certifications to provide the services that we've always provided, because we're a pretty young department," Strout said, "With the police reform, we're required to participate in a certain amount of training and the advisement that came from meetings that we've attended is that we have to budget for this level [80 hours] of training."
The department will be requesting an increase in its expenses budget to prevent ammunition shortages and to account for the increase in ammunition cost. Strout is requesting $161,202 for supplies, up from $118,150 this year, or 27 percent.
The ammunition budget was level funded for a long time, which caused shortages because every year officers used 1,500 rounds of handgun ammunition and 750 rounds of rifle ammunition for training. This left the department with 23 rounds of rifle ammunition in the building, which is not enough in case of emergencies.
"We have a specific amount of rounds we have to fire at two qualifications per year. We have to plan for some remedial training if someone's struggling with one of their very difficult qualification rounds. So we plan for a little remedial," Strout said.
The department did research as to how much it would need to solve the ammunition shortage by basing the budget off the July prices.
"My goal is, we're upping what we need this year, and then next year, and then we should be able to level that right out to exactly what we need, because we'll have the extra should we need it. This year, we sent three people to the academy, and it just wiped us out," Strout said.
The Finance Committee made a motion to approve the Police Department budget with the caveat it may be amended based on salary negotiations.
Tags: Dalton_budget, fiscal 2023,
