New chief off to great start

New chief off to great start

The oft-repeated suggestion that government function more like a business has seldom gotten stronger validation than was seen in Youngstown in recent weeks.

Every manager in private business knows that one of the first places to look when costs need to be cut is the overtime budget. But even as Youngstown struggled to get its financial house in order, the former police chief, Jimmy Hughes, insisted on doing business as usual. He even thwarted an attempt in the spring by City Council to cut the overtime allocation of $1,375,000 by $5550,000 to allow the hiring of new police officers. Under pressure, city council restored $400,000 of the cuts.

Now, as the numbers dramatically show under the new police chief, Rod Foley, that restoration of overtime funding was totally unnecessary.

Taking a disciplined view

What was needed instead was some scheduling discipline. Under Hughes, three to five officers were typically working six days a week, with that sixth day at overtime pay being used most often to cover vacations or sick time. Foley has reassigned officers from some special duties to patrol duty. While those special units, including the Mahoning County Violent Crimes Task Force and V-GRIP, have value, cutting overtime can be of greater value. Excessive overtime not only costs money, it burns out workers, including police officers. As some of the money saved is shifted to hiring entry-level officers, some of those special-duty assignments may be restored.

In the first two week pay period after Foley took command, overtime was cut by more than 60 percent, at a savings of $27,260. That extrapolates to an annual savings of more than $700,000.

And Foley thinks he’ll be able to do even a bit better than that, cutting the department’s overtime budget from $1.2 million in 2011 to $400,000 next year.