Overtime pay for Syracuse city workers is unavoidable, especially for police, fire, and the department of public works. As common councilors begin putting their final touches on the city budget, the city auditor wants them to be more realistic about what they allocate for overtime.
Halfway through the fiscal year on January 1, the city had used 70 % of its overall overtime funds. Several departments are nearly already tapped out, including SPD’s uniformed officer division, which used 94% its $5.5 million overtime budget. City auditor Alexander Marion suggested a different approach to cut costs.
“Do we need police officers filling in for crossing guards? Probably not," he said. "Do we need police officers responding to non-injury motor vehicle crashes? We could have community service officers responding to them. I think a lot of ordinance enforcement currently done by uniformed police officers could become a code enforcement function.”
Police Chief Mark Rusin told common councilors at a recent budget hearing that 165 CSO’s perform a critical role, but didn’t suggest adding more to their ranks or expanding their duties.
“Some of them will assist with parking enforcement or stop arm validation to work in those areas as well," he said. "They work in records. They work in a variety of different areas, very instrumental to support related enforcement.”
Rusin said officers waste a lot of time responding to thousands of false or malfunctioning burglar alarms at commercial and residential properties. He said they still have to investigate and spend an average of 44 minutes per alarm.
“So let's say that you're being lazy with respect to keeping your alarm system up to date. SPD is still going to all those alarms," Rusin said. "I think that there needs to be a little bit of a burden shifting over to the consumer that ultimately says, after the third false alarm, either you pay a higher fee or we don't go there anymore.”
Councilors seemed open to raising the $30 annual alarm registration fee set back in 2015 or imposing penalties on repeat offenders. Councilors hold a public hearing on the budget Wednesday at 5:30 and plan to vote on a spending plan May 8.
