Audit To Study Police Overtime Correlation with Vacation, Sick Days and Details

In fiscal 2010, the city budgeted $150,000 for Melrose Police overtime and spent approximately $219,000, and the year before that, spent $240,000, which generally reflects how much the city has spent on police overtime in previous years.

In his remarks before the Melrose Board of Aldermen's Appropriations Committee last week, Mayor Rob Dolan said that the police department is on track to spend approximately $325,000 this year on overtime, having spent $130,000 in overtime on the 43-member department in four and a half months so far this fiscal year.

"That is a 52 percent increase in overtime from last year," Dolan said last week. "I have looked for the last four months and I have found only one day, July 13, in which the department had perfect attendance. We do not have these concerns in any other department in the city. It's unacceptable to me and should be unacceptable to others in the city."

Dolan said that the increased spending on overtime would result in fewer police officers, less community policing and less money in other city budget items such as schools and roads.

Monday night before the full Board of Aldermen, Patrick Dello Russo, city auditor and chief financial officer, said that in fiscal 2008, the city spent $132,000 through the first four and a half months of the fiscal year on police overtime. and ultimately spent $293,000 on the entire year.

"We’re absolutely in my opinion on pace for another $300,000 year at this rate," Dello Russo said.

Melrose Police Lt. Timothy Maher, president of the Melrose Police Superior Officers Union, told Melrose Patch on Tuesday that in the first quarter of of the fiscal year, the department has spent $82,000 on overtime and that it's "very misleading" to extrapolate that cost out over the course of the fiscal year to arrive at the $325,000 projection.

"Historically in our department, and I’m sure many other city departments, Quarter 1 of a particular fiscal year is always the busiest—that’s when we have the majority of our vacation time, in July, August and September," he said, adding that those numbers historically taper off during the last three quarters of the fiscal year. "So when the auditor goes before the aldermen and says we’re on pace to spend $320K, that’s very misleading. That’d be true if we average the same amount per quarter in overtime."

Audit Focuses on Vacation, Sick Days Coinciding With Work Details

The first audit approved by the aldermen on Monday night spends $7,500 to hire public accounting firm , which would examine time and payroll records from Nov. 1, 2010 through Oct. 31 for worked police details, according to Dello Russo. (Engagement letter attached to this article as a PDF.)

The firm is charged with identifying instances in which a detail was performed while an officer was on vacation or out sick, or when a vacation or sick day was taken directly before or after the detail shift. Then, the report will identify whether that vacation or sick day was backfilled with overtime and the cost of that overtime, and then calculate the percentage of each shift that represents vacation and sick time.

"We have seen shifts in which 60 percent of the shift is on vacation, 70 percent of the shift is paid for by overtime," Dolan told the aldermen. "When you run a business, public or private, you have to limit people’s ability to take vacation."

Dolan specifically cited last week the current vacation policy, as enumerated in the collective bargaining agreement, that allows an officer to take a vacation day and work a detail.

"These things have to change," he said. "One, they should because it’s fair and right, but the fact is we are not going to be able to fund a police deparment without these changes. We need to go and say these changes are not only good for the taxpayers, but good for you (the officers)."

Maher said that by focusing the audit on vacation or sick days correlating with details over only the past year, the study would not accurately represent why overtime costs are higher so far this year. Overtime is classified by type on the department's books: "OM" for military-related overtime costs, "OS" for sick day-related overtime costs, and so forth. The action that comes last—whether vacation, sick, or military—dictates how the overtime is classified.

Because vacation is booked up to months in advance; military orders for someone to report for training or otherwise arrive a minumum of a week in advance; and an officer calling in sick happens hours before a shift; Maher said the audit will report a high number of sick day-related overtime costs.

"Some shifts we can handle two absences—it’s the third one that the study is going to find," he said, also saying that each officer is entitled up to 276 hours of military leave a year, but with orders asking some reservists to spend three days away for training instead of two, some members of the department are approaching 400 hours of military leave.

"It (the audit) will not look at the fact that when we hire individuals to fill a post and they’re going to be gone for 276 hours or in some cases up to 400 hours of military time, on top of 160 hours of vacation time, that is a significant number that with manpower shortages that would lead to an increase in overtime," he said. "That wouldn’t show up on the audit they have. They’re just looking for the raw numbers of the last action that was taken that caused the overtime."

In a phone interview with Melrose Patch, Melrose Police Chief Mike Lyle said that the department currently faces the departure of one officer who transferred to another community, one patrolman on military leave and the retirement of former chief and Lt. Richard Morrissey, with the person hired to replace Morrissey also deployed on active military duty.

"Obviously there's a number of variables you have to look at," Lyle said. "If I have a guy deployed in the military for a year and that shift is at a minimum (staffing) and someone goes on vacation, what really caused it (the overtime): the vacation, the guy in the military, a guy injured? What came first, the chicken or the egg? You don’t really know which way to look at it. There's also vacation scheduled 6-8 months prior to that (shift). Those are all factors there as well. I’m anxious to see what this report reveals. If it helps us in a productive and efficient manner, excellent. If there’s a better way to do it, I’m for it. Always have been."