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OT throws Campbell off balance
By jeanne starmack
campbell
Campbell’s police department has spent more in overtime so far than what was appropriated for the entire year.
A state commission that oversees the city while it is in fiscal emergency is trying to help city administrators determine how to stop the overtime issue from throwing the budget off balance.
The city appropriated $25,000 for the year for police overtime and already has spent $27,000, or 110.90 percent of the allocation, through July, the commission learned at its meeting Wednesday morning.
Financial Supervisor Tim Lintner said that at that rate, the department is on pace to spend “in the mid-50s.”
One solution, said city finance director Mike Evanson, is to adjust the budget appropriations to make up for the shortfall.
The problem with that, said Lintner, is the commission wants the budget’s general fund to have a surplus.
“There’s not a lot of wiggle room in the general fund to keep pace with the overtime,” Lintner said.
City Council President George Levendis, who represents council on the oversight panel, said he explored the cost of hiring another officer as a possible way to control overtime.
He said a patrolman with a family would cost the city $58,000 a year.
He said there still would be no way to control overtime, because officers will need leave and vacations.
“It would just cost the city another $58,000,” he said.
Even though the city uses part-time officers, it has to offer overtime to full-time officers first, so part-time officers are not the answer to the overtime issue either, the commission learned.
The city’s $830,000 signing bonus for leasing natural gas rights to Hilcorp Energy also is no help this year.
The city will not receive that money until next year, said Mayor Bill VanSuch.
This year’s police overtime situation contrasts starkly to last year’s. The city had appropriated $27,700 for police overtime and exceeded that for the year by $2,700.
Levendis said there is no overtime problem in the fire department. He said $12,000 was appropriated for overtime and the department is at 71 percent of that appropriation through July.
He said a lot of the overtime appropriation was spent at the beginning of the year when the department was training 16 new auxiliary and the six full-time firefighters. He said he doesn’t expect the department to exceed its appropriation by the end of the year.