How the City Drastically Reduced Overtime

As we noted last week, when we ran our initial study of the 100K Club of Davis, we noted that there were 61 members of that 100K Club of Davis.  Of those, 48 were public safety employees and 38 were firefighters.

Those numbers have fallen drastically, not due to a pay cut, but rather due to a profound drop in overtime usage.

In 2007-08, the City spent $1.55 million on overtime pay.  By 2010-11, that number has fallen to $686 thousand.

The vast majority of overtime is used by both fire and police.  In 2007, $867 thousand went to fire fighter and another half a million to police officers.

By 2011, firefighters received $346,000 in overtime pay police received $275,000.

This of course prompted questions about how this occurred.  It also led one reader to conclude, “If the city was able to cut overtime to the huge extent it has, then it couldn’t have been all that difficult… and is certainly an indication that the overtime wasn’t needed as much as is claimed. Sure it would be nice to have Cadillac services, but at some point economic reality has to reign supreme.”

Since police and fire are the chief consumers of overtime, we thought it would be best to discuss with the current Chiefs to understand how they cut the overtime.  Based on that discussion, the chiefs certainly would not agree with that reader.  They argue, in fact, that changes in overtime were not only difficult to achieve, but also potentially pose public safety risks.

Fire Chief Bill Weisgerber told the Vanguard that he believes that the 2007 numbers might have been distorted by out of area fires that are marked as overtime but are reimbursed to the city.

Nevertheless, there has been a concerted effort to reduce overtime locally.  Mr. Weisgerber told the Vanguard, “Numerous measures have been taken to reduce the impact of overtime, which began to be scaled back a couple of years ago in response to the challenges of local revenues.”

“Speaking to my tenure with the fire department, we’ve looked at every process for internal controls and cost containment, ranging from contract services and purchasing to the expenditure of overtime,” he added.

Chief Weisberber said, “The Davis Fire Department is fully committed to effective public safety and to insuring that our resources are dedicated to providing the most efficient, cost-effective delivery of emergency response services possible. The mission of the fire department is to deliver professional emergency response services within 5 minutes of receiving a 9-1-1 call, 90 % of the time.” 

He added, “And, the practice of austerity has been instilled throughout the Davis Fire Department organization, educating personnel from the top down as to the true cost of conducting our business–and, there is a noticeable cultural change to this effect.”

Some of the examples of policy changes, tightening review and suspending certain activities, include:

• Outside training, career development opportunities and officer meetings. (With exceptions: training essential to mission critical continuity in which a small cadre of personnel are allowed to attain “train-the-trainer” status.)
• Special projects requiring work outside scheduled duty time are approved on a case-by case/as-need basis for mission critical continuity, only.
• Staffing Community Events (e.g., Fire Department Open House, Celebrate Davis, special or Public Education events unable to be staffed on-duty).

However, these changes, he believes, come with a cost.  “These suspended activities will have a long-range impact to service delivery without creating mechanisms to provide: training for new and emerging technologies and techniques; career development and succession planning; and, completion of special projects that enhance service and/or create a more efficient delivery of current services,” the Chief said.

However he added, “The effects of austerity have short-term gains, with long-term ramifications that must be creatively addressed to maintain the level of service the community expects. So, our work is not complete by quite a long measure.”

The merger and consolidation presents a potential benefit of significant potential for maximizing efficiency through through resource sharing and eliminating duplication of effort.  That may in the longer term be the antidote to most of his concerns.

He concluded, “The more effective the response of the Fire Department (not allowing small fires to turn into large blazes; providing timely emergency medical response to prevent more serious patient outcome consequences), the more cost savings are realized overall, and of course, the more beneficial to the safety of our Davis community.”

Davis Police Chief Landy Black similarly told the Vanguard, “The OT reductions we have been able to achieve came about through conscientious and concerted efforts here at the PD. City Hall has directed all departments to reduce OT and the PD has done a fairly good job at accomplishing it.”

Like his counterpart, he argued that not only was this not a simple process, but it will result in “a somewhat poorer quality of service, or service potential, to our citizens.”  He added, “Furthermore, there is ultimately a limit to just how far OT can be reduced and have the police department do its job without making major errors.”

Chief Black laid out the process in very fine detail.  He pointed out while this may be more detailed than one expected, “to merely say, “Yes. It was a conscious effort,” really doesn’t tell the true story or give anyone the true sense of how complex seemingly simple cost reduction ideas can actually be.”

This is obviously an important point to counter the perception that somehow this was an easy process.

“From a practical standpoint, and in the interest of high level professionalism, the reduction/elimination of OT in certain areas of PD operations is impossible,” Chief Black told the Vanguard. “For instance, the largest single OT line-item is Court OT—currently over $75,000 a year. Our officers receive subpoenas that they are not at liberty to ignore and they must be paid for their time in court or waiting to testify.”

Thus he writes, “The only way to reduce that OT, is to stop making arrests and writing tickets.”

He added, “Another potentially large portion of OT is paid for responses and investigations associated with serious crimes and critical incidents. Studies have shown that the chances of solving and having successful prosecutions for some serious crimes is significantly increased with an all-hand-on-deck approach for the first 24 hours or so after the incident.”

“Processing the scene, running down leads before they can cool, identifying and contacting witnesses involves significant time from quite a number of personnel. While we don’t do this for every big case, there are times, especially with death investigations, stranger rapes, and some robberies, that we make the full court press to give ourselves the best opportunity for a successful outcome. Prudence says we must.”

“Critical incidents involving barricaded persons (with & without hostages), and bomb calls also have the potential for creating high OT usage and failing to have those SWAT, Negotiator (CNT), and EOD responses is not really an option,” he noted.

“A number of phenomena and actions on the part PD staff have contributed to the reduction in OT that we have achieved,” he said. “Some of these actions have very little down-side for the public and may actually result in improved service delivery in some cases. But some, as I will try to explain, have a potential down-side to the traditionally high-quality Davis Police service delivery reputation.”

Full Employment and Training

• For the past 2-3 years, the PD has experienced stable and nearly full staffing. This was not very often the case in prior years. When I arrived in 2007 (the 06/07 OT budget was around $600,000 that year, by the way) there were vacancies in both our sworn and civilian (dispatcher) ranks, and for long stretches of time there were Student Officers (SOs) and Student Dispatchers being trained by Field Training Officers—FTOs, and Communications Training Officers—CTOs. Those FTOs and CTOs received additional compensation, paid out of the OT budget.

• Having open positions and experiencing a constant rotation of new employees is another artifact of better economic times. Greater job availability results in employees able to seek different employment conditions and locations. Since the economic downturn, our employees have not been looking elsewhere because the jobs are fewer. And should they make a jump to one of those fewer jobs, they lose seniority and risk being in a position to suffer a layoff, something they might not have to risk here.

• I’d like to illustrate from the sworn officer perspective the result and OT impact of having a rotating, less stabilized staff. For much of the time before 2009 we might have had 2-5 SOs being trained at any one time, on top of vacancies that sometimes still existed at the same time. Just the SOs in training effectively represented as much as an 8% reduction in total sworn staff, a 9% reduction in OT-eligible (Officer/Corporal/Sergeant) staff, and, most importantly, about a 13% reduction in OT-eligible Patrol staff. So, even though on paper, PD might look to be fully, or nearly fully, staffed, until the SOs are fully trained and on their own, other impacts on meeting minimum staffing needs (sick, maternity/paternity, vacation, training, etc.) caused us to hit the critical level faster/earlier than currently. (During one period we had four Officers off at the same time for maternity/paternity, and the City policy on those leaves means employees absent for two months at a time.) OT was liberally used to meet Patrol and Dispatch minimums. Now that we have been fully staffed with officers out of the training phase for longer periods of time, it is easier to maintain minimum staffing without dipping into OT as frequently to accomplish it.

• When they economy finally turns around, and jobs become more plentiful, will vacancies and training requirements force us to exceed current OT budget limits?

Staff Realignment

• We have one fewer Traffic Officer, two fewer Special Investigations Detectives (we’ve pulled out of dedicated Hi-Tech and Gang investigations) than we did five years ago. We have shifted those resources to Patrol. This also enabled us to create full-time Bike Officer and School Resource Officer positions within the Patrol/Operations Division. To some degree, those changes have resulted in a bit less exposure to OT conditions.

• On the other hand, and to our and the community’s potential detriment, our traffic safety operations, and our ability to independently investigate and stay informed and proficient with regard to Hi-Tech and Gang crimes/issues, have been negatively impacted.

Management/Supervisory Oversight

• The employees have borne a burden in our efforts to reduce OT, beyond the impact on their paychecks. More often than in the past, employees have had their schedules flexed to avoid the necessity of bringing someone in on OT to cover staffing shortages. Sometimes this means an officer loses having his/her days off all be in a row. Other times they may be directed to work a shift other than the one they are normally assigned. We try not to overdo it in this realm, but it does happen and the officers whose routines are tossed around are paying the price.

• Also, a continual pressure to control OT (beyond the usual good stewardship efforts that should always exist) has been in effect for most of the time since I became Police Chief over four years ago. This may be a good thing from a purely fiscal perspective, but from an operational and public service perspective, it may be less desirable. The PD’s ability to provide the same level of service we could be providing, and in prior times were providing, has been reduced. In an effort to control OT, greater restraint has potential negative ramifications:

• Is potential evidence overlooked in our hurry to complete a case before the end of shift to avoid OT?
• Is potential evidence lost/degraded when we hold cases for later dispatch to avoid an earlier shift’s OT?
• Are witnesses less easy to locate when we hold cases for later dispatch to avoid an earlier shift’s OT?
• Is potential evidence lost/degraded or perpetrators not caught when we are more restrictive in after-hours K9 deployments?
• Is a less desirable preliminary investigation—the starting platform for the follow-up investigation—the result of being more restrictive in after-hours detective deployments to more critical incidents?
• Do fewer stake-outs and other after-hours proactive/tactical operations result in fewer crimes being detected/deterred or criminals arrested?
• Training is conducted less frequently in an effort to reduce the need for OT to fill the vacancies in the operational staffing while the normally working officer is in the training. When does that chicken come home to roost? When does a less well trained officer make a mistake that damages a case or has fiscal costs and/or other negative ramifications to the PD and the City?
• There are many little things that just don’t get done any more and this list is far from exhaustive.

New Patrol Shifts

• Converting from four squads working twelve hour shifts (84 hour pay periods) to three squads working 10-hour shifts and two working 12-hour shifts with one 8-hour shift per pay period (80 hour pay periods) has resulted in greater coverage during peak times, while at the same time tending to reduce the exposure to OT potential. This has also been helpful in having extra staffing on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday nights during the spring and fall when we used to compelled to bring on OT paid bar/party patrols due to the high call volume.

• This was accomplished through management planning, and most importantly, through the cooperation of the Davis Police Officers’ Association during their last round of contract negotiations. Patrol Officers essentially experienced a 5% pay reduction, though they do work fewer scheduled hours now.
• This occurred last fall, in the very early part of FY 2010/2011. The initial impacts have been captured. The full value will begin to be reaped starting this upcoming fiscal year.

• The new shift pattern eliminated 4 hours of straight-time OT paid to patrol employees every pay period—a nearly $80,000 annual OT reduction.
• The new shift pattern created a better training day overlap that resulted in less OT paid to cover Patrol shortages to accomplish required training.

For me, the big unanswered questioned is more philosophical.  Why are we offering overtime at all to salaried employees who are performing tasks within the confines of their normal duties? 

These are professionals making between $70,000 and $111,000 in base salary.  I think it is one thing to pay for overtime for firefighters traveling out of county or police officers getting training, but for the standard duty, that seems misplaced.

Nevertheless, this appears to be one area where the city took seriously strong criticisms and saved a lot of money.

The next task will be for them to continue to save money while figuring out ways not to reduce service.

—David M. Greenwald reporting