10/20/2022
BREAKING GLOVERSVILLE POLICE DEPARTMENT IS EXPECTING AN EVEN HARDER TIME PATROLLING THE STREETS IN 2023, AS WELL AS COMMON COUNCIL AND MAYOR SLASHING THE BUDGET FOR THE DEPARTMENT.
GLOVERSVILLE – The Common Council trimmed the Gloversville Police Department’s request for a larger overtime budget and more money for ammunition by a combined $27,000 Monday night, as they worked to reduce an estimated $3 million city budget deficit for 2023.
GPD Captain Mike Garavelli and GPD Lt. Brad Schaffer told the council Monday night a shortage in police staffing has put the department on pace to exceed its 2022 overtime budget of $234,000, having spent $203,000 on overtime through the middle of October with the holiday vacation and parade season coming up in November and December.
“We’re currently running a deficit in our overtime line, year to date,” Schaffer told the council. “We’re anticipating that deficit will grow throughout the remainder of the year.”
Garavelli Monday night said the GPD will soon have 29 officers available for police work, eight fewer than the 37 police officer jobs funded in the city’s 2022 budget. He said having too few police officers leads to greater overtime costs.
Mayor Vince DeSantis’ proposed budget requested $273,000 for overtime costs for 2023, but 2nd Ward Councilman Art Simonds expressed skepticism that the GPD would need that much with the department slowly expanding its ranks with new recruits and, hopefully, a few lateral transfers from other police departments.
“I’m thinking we can knock $20,000 off of this, put it at about $250,000 for overtime, and that’ll still put them over their (2022) budget,” Simonds said.
“We also need to talk about what goes into overtime,” 3rd Ward Councilwoman Betsy Batchelor said. “For me, sending officers out for patrol work is critical and not up for debate, but I have problems with people manning parades and especially participating in parades, and since they are always on a holiday they are getting double and triple overtime, and I think we need to slim that down.”
First Ward Councilwoman Marcia Weiss said that although not every city parade police participate in occurs on a paid holiday the city’s Memorial Day parade did, and 12 GPD officers participated, averaging $344 each in holiday/overtime pay.
“That seems like a lot of money to me to march in a parade,” Weiss said.
Schaffer told the council that nobody likes the parades less than he does, but they should remember that holiday pay is actually in a separate budget line than the police department’s regular overtime pay budget.
“With that being said, I can assure you many of our staff do not enjoy the parades, especially during the holiday season,” Schaffer said. “The only thing I would caution you is that there have been numerous high-profile incidents at parades, not just outside the city of Gloversville. We had a border-line attempted murder at a holiday parade where our guys had to almost shoot a woman who was threatening to kill her child. We’ve had weapons complaints that happened right on Castiglione Park during a parade. You guys control the purse strings, I respect that, but looking from the outside I don’t know that that’s the first place I would cut”
“It’s not the first place, but it is a place,” Simonds countered.
Members of the council were also surprised to learn that city police have not yet received some ammunition they ordered last year.
Garavelli said GPD gets a box of ammunition delivered from time to time, but ammunition suppliers nationwide have prioritized larger departments amid a supply chain shortage.
Simonds asked if it might be possible to save ammunition costs by purchasing a computer training program.
Schaffer said the GPD has explored a virtual reality shooting training program from Arizona-based Axon Enterprise, the company that supplies the department’s tasers and body camera equipment. He said the equipment would require a five-year contract and likely cost about $3,000 to $4,000 a year, and the company wasn’t willing to come to Gloversville for a demonstration of the product.
Schaffer said the cost of the less-than-lethal paintball ammunition the GPD sometimes uses for training has also gone up significantly.
“Our less-than-lethal shotgun rounds, prior to everything associated with the death of George Floyd, we were paying roughly $10 a box, five rounds per box … now they’re charging $8 per round,” he said.
The consensus of the council reduced the 2023 GPD budget for ammunition from $12,000 down to $8,000.
Here is DeSantis’ $21.5 million proposed budget in descending order of cost and percentage of total budget.
Employee benefits, including police, fire and DPW — $6.5 million, 30.2%
Department of Public Works — $4.3 million, 20.2%
Police Dept. — $4.3 million, 19.7%
Fire Dept. — $2.7 million, 12.7%
Finance Dept. — $1.1 million, 5.1%
Debt service — $771,211, 3.6%
Transit — $750,446, 3.5%
Contingency — $375,000, 1.7%
City Clerk — $232,242, 1.1%
Economic Development — $193,000, 0.9%
Legal costs — $143,000, 0.7%
Mayor’s office — $73,000, 0.3%
Source- Leader Herald 10/18/2022 Jason Subik
