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Police Chief Anthony Campbell: OT budget “unrealistic” from start.
In its latest financial report, the city projects that police overtime will top $8 million by the end of the fiscal year — nearly double what the officials had initially budgeted.
That overtime update is one of the key takeaways from the city’s latest monthly financial report, published on Wednesday and covering city finances from the beginning of the fiscal year on July 1 through the end of October. The report also includes details on dramatic across-the-board reductions in crime from 2016 to 2018.
“The end product that we deliver to you is phenomenal and cannot be questioned,” city Police Chief Anthony Campbell said.
The October 2018 financial report projects that the city’s police department will spend $8.4 million on overtime by the time that Fiscal Year 2018 – 2019 (FY19) ends on June 30, 2019. That’s nearly $4 million above the department’s fiscal year overtime budget of $4.4 million.
The report projects that the department as a whole will end the fiscal year with a $1.6 million cumulative deficit, thanks to over $2 million in projected salary savings due to unfilled budgeted positions.
“That overtime number that we’re given is a completely unrealistic number,” Campbell said about the original $4.4 million budget. “It’s just not a realistic operating number.”
From the very beginning of the fiscal year, Campbell has expressed public frustration over what he sees as unrealistic budgeting by the mayor and by the Board of Alders around actual overtime needs in a department beset with retirements, resignations, and young officers fleeing to better paying jobs in the suburbs.
“Overtime costs at the NHPD are often connected to overall staffing levels,” city spokesperson Laurence Grotheer wrote in an emailed statement. “[T]here are currently one hundred or so police officer vacancies. Shifts are filled at an additional cost to reflect Mayor [Toni] Harp’s commitment to public safety, while dozens of new recruits are about halfway through their training at the police academy.
“Acting CAO [chief Administrative Officer Sean] Matteson is working with Aldermanic leadership,” he continued, “to identify and transfer funds from other line items in the police department budget to cover these overtime costs.”
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Zelinsky: Called in to help.
Campbell said that the department is working with local tax expert and law professor Ed Zelinsky, a former alder, on an internal audit of the department’s finances and operations.
He said that he and his assistant chiefs recently met with the mayor’s office and with Board of Alders President Tyisha Walker-Myers and Majority Leader Richard Furlow about the actual drivers of overtime.
“President Walker-Myers and myself have only met once in an official meeting with the Chief regarding OT,” Furlow told the Independent via text message on Friday. “Chief Campbell gave a report to the Mayor and BOA leadership last month and this month Chief Reyes did the same.”
“Many have been astonished that a lot of what drives overtime are requests from the community to do things for the community that require police presence,” Campbell said, such as working at parades, festivals, and other neighborhood events.
“Let’s come up with a realistic number” based on the department’s actual staffing levels and overtime needs, Campbell said.
He said the department is currently at a moment of staffing “crisis,” poised to lose up to 50 officers to retirement or other jobs between now and the end of the calendar year.
On a positive note, he said, the department is set to graduate 28 cadets from its police academy at the end of March. Those newly minted officers should be patrolling city streets come June. He said that the department will seat another class of around 20 cadets at the end of December, and that it should be seating yet another class this spring.
The monthly budget report also contains a crime comparison table describing drops in nearly every category of crime between 2016 and 2018, looking at Jan.1 through Oct. 31 for each year.
The table shows that murders have dropped from 11 to 9 (18 percent), robberies have dropped from 305 to 237 (29 percent), aggravated assaults dropped from 525 to 371 (29 percent), motor vehicle thefts dropped from 610 to 508 (16 percent), vandalism dropped from 2,234 to 1,679 (25 percent), weapons violations dropped from 372 to 258 (30 percent), and firearm discharges dropped from 124 to 84 (32 percent).
“The community is not being traumatized by serious assaults and deaths” in the street, Campbell said, praising his officers propelling the drop in crime despite budget constraints and a union contract that is still in arbitration. “They’re doing incredible work.”