Police Chief offers ideas on costs to trim, revenues to create

July 24, 2009
by Christine Yeres

New Castle Police Chief Charles Ferry visited the town board in their work session Tuesday night to suggest ways in which the New Castle Police Department might find ways to trim its $5 million budget. The department operates with 42 full time officers and nine civilian employees.

The Patrol Division of the New Castle Police Department is arranged in five squads of six officers each, one sergeant and five patrol officers. They operate in three shifts daily on a rotating schedule. Under the chief of police there are three lieutenants, six sergeants, 28 police officers – two of whom are traffic officers – one detective sergeant, two detectives and a Youth Officer who is also a detective. Now that Ferry has been promoted to chief of police, his lieutenant spot will be filled by a sergeant; the sergeant spot will be filled by a patrol officer; and the patrol officer’s spot will be filled by one of the two traffic officers. The traffic officer spot will be left empty, a budget trim by attrition.

Overtime, the obvious target for cuts

At about $400,000, overtime is a substantial expense for the department. A contributing factor is the scheduling rules dictated by the police officers’ union contract. Police officers’ schedules are set a year in advance, and changes to their schedules must be made with at least three months’ notice according to their union contract. Changes that will occur within three months must be accounted for as overtime, another requirement of the police officers’ contract.

Ferry set out for the town board several services the police currently provide that might be reduced or even cut, beginning with the department’s weekend bike patrol. Spring through autumn, Friday through Sunday, one officer is stationed in downtown Chappaqua and another rides through Gedney Park. Ferry proposed keeping only the Friday afternoon bike patrol downtown, since the streets are bustling with activity when middle school lets out. This reduction could save $11,000 a year, Ferry reported. 

The police department runs child safety seat checks for people with young children, mainly residents, who find out about the service through the state’s website where certified safety seat checking stations are listed. The New Castle police inspect over 400 of the seats per year, Ferry noted, running sessions once or twice a month, as demand arises. The department also keeps a supply of loaner car seats for grandparents with visiting grandchildren, and to replace seats on the spot that are found faulty. 

Although inspection training for police officers is free, they must still be paid for their time spent in the training course. But their overtime pay during inspection sessions is the primary cost of this program. By reducing the safety seat checks to a few times per year, Ferry told board members, $13,700 could be saved. 

The town has recently begun a method of handling court cases that organizes the schedule of trials around the police officer who issued the summons rather than around persons who have received summonses, Ferry explained. That means that instead of requiring five or six police officers to appear for their respective trials on a given night, the cases for which one officer is responsible are clustered on a single night. “We’re in the trial stage of that,” said Ferry, who estimated that this new arrangement could save overtime costs of $23,000 annually.

Ferry also suggested cutting training funds in half for now. “There’s value in the training,” he said, “but we can put it back if the economy recovers.”

Suggestions for raising revenues

Currently the town charges a one-time-only $50 fee to register a burglar or fire alarm and make a record of how to reach the homeowner in case of activation. There are currently 3,095 registered alarms in New Castle, and police officers responded to about 1500 alarms in 2008. 

Surrounding communities, Ferry pointed out, charge a $25 annual fee, which would generate around $77,000 per year. “That would benefit us both in generating revenue and in keeping our files up to date,” he explained. “The way things are now, when we have an alarm we call people and find no one knows who they are, or find that they’ve moved. If our records are up to date, we can call a neighbor who might know how to reset it.” 

A higher fee for commercial alarms could be considered, Ferry suggested, since “records have to be altered when employees change. If the alarm goes off after hours and we have to call someone who lives pretty far out of town, we have to have an officer remain at the scene until they arrive.”

Revenue might also be generated, Ferry told board members, by charging an $85 hourly fee for police coverage of school district events such as football games or dances. 

Chief Ferry was the last of the New Castle department heads to make preliminary suggestions on how to find $2 million worth of cuts for the 2010 budget. He was followed later in the board’s work session by a second quarter financial report delivered by the town’s chief comptroller, Sheila Doughtie. The board learned from Doughtie that in a comparison of second-quarter 2008 to second-quarter 2009, tax delinquencies were up, sales tax revenues down, building permit revenue decreased by $65,000 and mortgage taxes were down 27%.

To find our archived budget articles all in one place, click here: Budget Buzz: Collected articles on Town of New Castle taxes
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