Trimming Youngstown brass to level of others makes sense

Trimming Youngstown brass to level of others makes sense

Mayor Jay Williams is taking on one of Youngstown’s largest budget issues, the cost of policing the city.

His method is daring and is bound to attract some strong opposition from the ranks of the police department.

Williams has looked at other cities in Youngstown’s size range and has found that the department is top heavy. He is not suggesting that the department’s manpower be cut. What he’s suggesting is that the city needs more police officers on the street and fewer detective/sergeants, lieutenants and captains, most of whom are on desk duty and all of whom receive significantly higher pay.

The survey provided to council along with the proposed legislation shows that Youngstown has a ratio of one detective/sergeant for every 2.4 patrol officers. Canton, by comparison has a ratio of one to 5.5. That means that Youngstown has twice as many detective/sergeants per cop than Canton. Both have 121 patrol officers.

The reaction of Capt. Kenneth Centorame, president of the ranking officers union, was that, “It’s a sad thing that there’s no chance for a future for new hires.” The implication is that young patrol officers will see no future for themselves in the Youngstown Police Department. The reduction in ranking officers will be done through attrition over a period of years, so it is undeniable that there will be few promotion opportunities.

Corrective action

That is an unfortunate and unavoidable consequence of the city’s past practice of creating too many supervisory positions in the department. The alternative is to live with the status quo. That would mean continuing to pay 50 detective/sergeants a base pay of $58,100 a year, compared to a four-year patrol officer’s pay of $50,500. Reducing the number of detective sergeants from 50 to 24 would mean a savings of nearly $200,000 in base pay. It would also mean a reduction in overtime costs. In 2007, the 50 detective sergeants received $448,797 in overtime while the 121 patrol officers received $831,400. Overtime for detective/sergeants ranged from $286 to more than $30,000 and averaged $8,976. Overtime for patrol officers ranged from $99 to more than $30,000, but averaged considerably less, $6,871.

Those overtime figures, by the way, show that there is ample opportunity for police officers to make a very good living — as much as $80,000 a year — without a promotion beyond patrol officer. The job also carries excellent fringe benefits, including health coverage and healthy pensions. These will still be desirable jobs, even if the ratio is trimmed from one ranking officer for every two patrol officers to a ratio similar to other cities, about 1 to 3.7.

The statistics assembled by the mayor’s office make it perfectly clear that Youngstown has far more supervisory officers working at higher pay grades than comparable cities. Maintaining such a ratio as a morale booster is untenable.

Reducing those officer ranks — as painful as it may be for those on the department who were looking forward to being promoted as older officers retired — is the most logical starting point for the city to live within its budget. City Council should appreciate that the mayor has taken the lead on this issue and has given it a piece of legislation that will save the city hundreds of thousands of dollars a year in operating costs.