It may be the dead of winter, but summer is already on the minds of Watsonville city employees—specifically the June budget and the potential $5 million hole in it. At the Feb. 9 city council meeting, financial director Marc Pimentel blamed declining property taxes and the state and national budget crisis, but he also pointed out that police and fire overtime were a major stress on the city coffers.
It may be the dead of winter, but summer is already on the minds of Watsonville city employees—specifically the June budget and the potential $5 million hole in it. At the Feb. 9 city council meeting, financial director Marc Pimentel blamed declining property taxes and the state and national budget crisis, but he also pointed out that police and fire overtime were a major stress on the city coffers. The fire department is projected to go $759,000 over budget and the police department $294,000, according to the report, and Pimentel estimates this is almost entirely due to overtime costs exceeding $1.5 million. Overtime hours have nearly doubled since 2007 and Pimentel called the trend “unsustainable.”
There’s not much wiggle room at the fire department, says Watsonville Fire Chief Mark Bisbee. “We’re doing everything we can with what we’ve got,” he says, adding that overtime hours are a given as long as the fire departments keeps “minimum constant staffing.” That means whether someone takes a vacation or gets sick or injured, someone must be paid in overtime to pick up the slack. “We’ve calculated that if everybody just takes their minimum vacation, no sick leave or anything, that takes about $300,000,” he says.
Then of course there are those pesky conditions under which overtime is a necessity—you know, fires. “We’re going to do everything we can over the issues we have influence over,” he says.
Things are slightly less tricky over at the Watsonville Police Department, where the overtime excesses are easily explained by the 2007 decision to switch to a three day, 12-hour shift schedule for officers.
“We went to an emergency schedule to help put more officers on the streets while low on staff,” says Chief Manny Solano. “This 12-hour shift comes with built-in overtime.” With eight hours built-in overtime per month paid at time and a half, the leap in overtime costs in the last three years is no mystery. Now, with eight new patrol officers trained up and filling that gap, the force has been able to switch back to a more normal four-day, 10-hour shift, eliminating the built-in overtime. Solano estimates that should essentially do away with $300,000 worth of overtime, not to mention give officers a break.
“Twelve-hour days are very long days. Some officers have expressed, you know, appreciation to be able to go back to the 10-hour shift,” he says.
